


Blow out the Stars

by Bastetmoon



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Dreams and Nightmares, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Reylo - Freeform, just throw me in the trash compactor, not really a happy relationship, under the influence of the force
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-30
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2018-07-28 07:25:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 42,167
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7630633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bastetmoon/pseuds/Bastetmoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They're not so different, just two sides of the same coin.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In Broken Chimera

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Chimera (n.)a thing that is hoped or wished for but is impossible to achieve, an illusion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is a rewrite of Two Voices in the Black (of which i posted only the first chapter). Therefore some of the content of this chapter may be familiar to anyone who had read that fic.

He burns.

 The Force, threads of it trace through Kylo Ren’s veins like fire. It curls, pooling in his fingertips, whispering half realized promised in his ears.

His parents never understood it, when he came crying to them in the nights, terrified of the visions that plagued him. The voices that would taunt him in the dark.

 _“You must learn to control it.”_ That’s what his uncle-turned-master used to tell him, back before the flames engulfed the new temple and the world he knew was splintered under the very might of _it_.

He’d long ago stopped vying for control. No. Kylo Ren burns with a power, a rage he cannot contain. It bursts forth at the most unexpected of times.

_“Give in to it.”_

The Dark and the Light, they’re not so different he’s learned. Just two sides to the same coin. One cannot exist without the other, and to have true mastery—to be powerful—you must study both. He’s grown stronger since the destruction of Starkiller base. Much stronger. All this the Supreme Leader teaches, and he listens.

He turns to face his disciples, six black masked faces stare blankly back. The myriad of scars upon his back flare in painful protestations of the sudden movement. They are reminders well deserved of his last duel upon the crumbling surface of Starkiller base, where he had grasped defeat from the jaws of victory.

 _Through strength I gain power. Through power I gain victory._  This is the Way of the knights of Ren and of the Sith before them. Kylo Ren has spent long hours in quiet reflection, meditating on their meaning.  He had been weak when he’d faced the scavenger, compromised by his unfortunate encounter with Han Solo, and by the blast to his side. But that is long healed now and the only place his father can reach him was through the convoluted realm of dreams.

No, Kylo Ren is certain, next time they met, it would be he and not Rey who had the mastery.

“My brethren,” He addresses them, the thrum of his modified voice crackling in the silent training room. “The Supreme Leader has new work for us.”

Snoke is right. It’s not about control. It’s about power.

 

* * *

 

 

Control. Each time her breath goes in and out, it draws closer, only to slip away at the last second. Sometimes she thinks she can almost touch it: the light. Just as Maz Kanata told her so long ago it really is _all_ around.

Only she can’t quite reach it.

Sitting cross legged upon a crumbling stone wall (her favorite place for meditation) Rey surveys her island in the ocean, the safe little home she’d held on to for so long. It’s just as she dreamed it. Who knew one planet could contain so much water? From here she can see it stretching out to an unknown horizon. She closes her eyes again, lets her breathing level out. Her mind clears like glass. Carefully Rey pushes beyond herself searching for the tingle of power she’d felt when she’d battled Kylo Ren. It dances, illusive as smoke before outstretched fingertips.

A gust of wind tickles the skin of her cheek and her concentration shatters.

Frustrated she grinds her teeth together. It’s no use. The power she’d felt in the snowy woods of Starkiller base has all but vanished, filtering out of her like sand from between cupped hands.

Rey sighs and pushes herself up off the stone wall, ignoring the stiffness in her legs. She will try again, later.

“Learn control and you will succeed.” Luke tells her when she returns to the cluster of low earthen huts. He is calm and patient with her. Rey knows that he understands how difficult this is for her.

Still it rankles her that he cannot give her any more concrete instruction.

When she’d arrived here, many months ago, she’d been so full of hope. Here was someone who could teach her, help her understand this newfound power that burned its way through her veins. She’d held out the saber to him. But there’d been no joy in his eyes, only sadness, guilt, wariness. It had taken weeks before she’d been able to convince him to give her even a rudimentary training. And still refuses to instruct her in any sort of combat, instead focusing on meditation and conditioning. He will not even touch the old weapon she’d brought with her.

Even so, there’s no denying she’s come far since her arrival. The training routines, the meditations, she settles into it like a natural rhythm. Rey can feel her body changing too. On Jakku rationing combined with the manual labor of the scrap yards kept her thin and emaciated. It’s hardly a surprise that she puts on weight now, even if it is mostly muscle. The distance she could run on the first day has almost tripled now.

She bows her head, “I am trying.”

“And you are doing well. I admit you are much more patient that I was at your age.” It’s one of the first pieces of encouragement he’s given her in months, and Rey treasures it.

While he’s always kind sometimes Master Luke looks at Rey and she thinks he is seeing someone else entirely: his last and most disastrous student. It fills her with a shame she cannot place. Perhaps it is because she is being compared to _him_.

So she throws herself back into what training he gives her and tries not to think of Kylo Ren. The thought of him is enough to send a chill racing down her spine. Nightmares, they intensify with each passing day. If she shuts her eyes she’s sure she can remember exactly how _he_ looks in her subconscious. Dark and furious, he is just as she remembers from their last confrontation: bloody with the gash she cut still smoking across the pale skin of his face.

Each night Kylo Ren comes ravening out of the depths of her mind. He calls out to her, voice reverberating through her brain in unintelligible echoes. Always she runs through the darkness (through dense underbrush that pulls at her clothes, dragging her backwards), or else unsheathes the steady beam of her saber to cross with his. In her subconscious he is more skilled, more powerful than she remembers. When morning comes she wakes covered in cold sweat. Her skin tingles in the places his dream-saber burned through her.

 Even on her little island in the ocean she does not feel completely safe.

 

“No!” The man on the floor quakes, left hand cradling the stump of what was once an arm. “Don’t!”

Kylo Ren looks down at the sniveling wreck of a human, curled at his feet. A prisoner like all the rest. He recognizes the grey jumpsuit. The saber they had given him—and that had been cut from his hand—glints on the floor. Once he’d been foolish enough to ask why the prisoners, they were hardly a challenge. Snoke had merely shifted on his throne. _Compassion is a disease, a weakness that must be purged._

Even as his saber arc downward he feels it, the surge of power that always comes with the kill.

A ripple of panic pulls at him, suddenly, distorting his eyes and tipping him off balance. His stroke goes wide, missing the man and instead skating off the floor in a shower of sparks.

Blue. Green. A stone hut. Wind tugging at strands of dark hair. Warmth. The island in the ocean.

The flash of images dazzles him, blinking in and out of existence before he has time to make sense of them.

“Rey.” The word hisses from his lips before he can help himself.

Sometimes he thinks he can sense her, a glimmer of the mind he’d touched on Starkiller base. He feels the grass beneath her feet, can taste the salt breeze upon her lips. Each time he reaches out to make sure, to verify that it truly is her conscious that tugs at him. But she’s already gone, pinging back like elastic stretched too far.

On the floor the prisoner is trying to crawl away, leaving a streak of scarlet gore on the floor to mark his progress.  The few Knights that gathered round are watching him closely, their faces guarded. Still he knows their thoughts; few among them have the training to keep him out. Kylo knows they watch him for any sign of weakness or of doubt. These things are not their way.

A flick of the wrist and the man crumples. His heart has stopped. Looking at the prone form, face still contorted in pain, Kylo Ren tells himself that he feels nothing. Its training, nothing more. The Knights go back to their own sparing matches as the maintenance droid rush forward to dispose of the body. With a thrum of energy he sheaths the blade of his saber.

It is not until Ren has returned to his own spartan chambers that he reopens the barriers that guard his mind. There sitting before the mask of his grandfather he searches for the scavenger’s presence. It takes him minutes to sort through the confused mass of consciousness that inhabit the Supreme Leader’s base and then to push beyond. However, the place in his mind where he’d felt her earlier is quiet. As quickly as she had come Rey the scavenger has vanished once more.

 

* * *

 

 

One day, just like that, the damn breaks. Rey is sitting on the wall once more, mind as clear and blank as she can possibly make it. She pushes out as she has always done and it’s as if a screen is lifted before her. She can’t help but gasp as it comes rushing in like the waves that crash against the cliffs so far below.

Exhilaration courses through her. The Force. She can feel it. Every living thing that surrounds her shines like a pinprick of light, a galaxy of a thousand dim stars. She can feel the worms writhing in the dirt beneath her and the reptilian looking bird’s wheeling far overhead. They bathe her in their warm glow. Rey remembers this sensation and she welcomes it back.

_“No! Don’t!”_

Like the ripple of a stone that has been dropped into clear water. The little lights waver and flickered out. For a mere moment Rey is looking at her hands. Gloved in black leather they rested upon the hilt of a saber not her own. Red fire bathes her face with its heat. A man—lying crumpled and forsaken upon black tiles—screams. Something in that scream, makes her own heart soar with some sort of animalistic, twisted glee.

Only it cannot be _her_ joy.

Anger. Fear. Pain. Power. _His_ thoughts swirl like thick smoke, burning, choking.

_Rey._

Rey’s eyes fly open and the vision winks out of existence the way a candle is snuffed. She cast an eyes up at the sky, half expecting to see the black command shuttle descending through the thick atmosphere. It’s blue and very empty. In her chest her heart thuds loudly. Looking down she sees that her hands are shaking.

Tentatively she opens her mind once more, but the presence has vanished. Her little galaxy of life forms wheals on undisturbed.

When she returns to the hut a half hour later she finds Master Luke waiting for her. His face is a mask of worry.

“I felt your pain. What’s happened?”

Shakily she settles herself on the dirt beside him, drawing her knees up to her chin like a child.

“I could feel him.” She launches into an explanation of her vision. How Kylo Ren’s thoughts had burned, how she had been inside his body, felt his saber under her own fingertips as she brought it down on the screaming man. “He was _hurting_ someone, why?”

Luke’s eyes are as distant as the horizon. “That is Snoke’s way: to weed out compassion, and crush empathy.”

“By torturing innocent people?”

“I cannot give you justification for what he teaches, it is dark, and twisted, a corruption of the force.”

She recalled the surge of power that had run through her even as she’d brought the blade down. “It made him feel powerful.”

“Yes, I imagine it did. Is this the first time you have touched his mind?”

“No.”

“When else?” There is an urgency to the words that makes Rey’s stomach clench cold with fear.

“When I was his prisoner on Starkiller base. He tried to invade my mind and I pushed him back.” She can still recall the feeling of him in her mind: tearing through thoughts with no regard, stealing things to which he had no right. He had _seen_ her then. And she had seen him. It’s enough to make her skin break out into gooseflesh.  “What does it mean?”

“It means you must learn to better guard your thoughts.”

“So it is his thoughts I am sensing then?” She thinks of her strange dreams. Did that make them hers? Or his?

“Yes, or at least so would appear. However the ability to reach into minds is not one that is common among the Jedi. You must be careful of it.”

“Couldn’t use it against him, to learn his plans? Anticipate his moves?”

“No!” Luke’s eyes flash with a sudden warning, “Snoke will have trained him well to break the minds of others. You think you are invading his thoughts, but in reality there is no knowing what he might take from yours.”

He gives her a new set of exercises after that, to help guard her mind from intrusion. Rey tries to ease herself with the knowledge that more training she will be able to block him out. Luke also promises to speak with his masters—he mentions them now and again but Rey has never seen them nor understand how he can commune with those from beyond the grave—to better understand how such a thing, such a linking of mind can exist from such a distance.

Still her mind is drawn back to the visions she’s seen of him, both in her recent mediation and in her dreams. All dark and unbridled power, the whisper of her name as their minds touched. Her skin crawls.

 

* * *

 

 

The click of boots on stone stirs the silent air of the subterranean cavern. Light cast of by a few sporadic glowing orbs flickers unsteadily upon the stone walls.

“Supreme Leader, you summoned me?” Kylo Ren’s voice seems almost unnecessarily harsh in the lingering silence.

“ _Come closer child? Let me see your fac_ e?” Words slither through the air like oil and decay.

With a creak of joints he rises.

Upon a throne carved from the rock of the chamber Snoke reclines. The scars upon his pace face stand out silver white in the semi-darkness.  Around his humanoid form the threads of the force thrum with power. In this way Ren has always fancied the Supreme leader reminds him of a spider that lurks at the center of its web.

Snoke reaches out with one ghostly hand. An immense power bends Ren in half, doubling over him against the unyielding floor. A second later an insurmountable presence rubs up against his thoughts, brushing through him barriers as easily as if they were make of smoke. Images of his training—the flash of the red saber in his hands—and of the knights their masked faces dark as they spar jump to the fore of his mind. Ren sees himself arguing with General Hux over the coordinates of a resistance fighter, and hears once more the cries of the villagers on Jakku.

He can only grit his teeth and yield as the Supreme Leader tears through his mind.

Finally the Supreme Leader settles on his dreams, examining each subconscious image in detail. Images of his father and mother flick past his eyes before they shift, turning to visions of the scavenger

An ever present specter he chases down the long hallways of Starkiller base, forever a few too many paces away from his grasp. Or else lying heavy in snow, the scent of his own blood clogging his nose, she stand over him. Rey the Scavenger regards him with all her fury and hate, the stolen saber tight in her hand. A figure of white and bronze, the moon and stars conspiring to set a blazing halo about her head.

‘ _Monster’_ she calls him, and in the blistered landscapes of his dreams her presence is as cool as ice.

Kylo Ren gasps as Snoke’s mind removes from his like a mighty weight is lifted.  He throws out his hands to keep from falling forward against the stones.

“ _You still dream of this girl, the scavenger from Jakku.”_

“She is no one to me.” The words taste insubstantial in his mouth. Ashes.

" _No one, or someone?”_ Ren cannot tell for sure but the Supreme Leader’s tone sounds almost amused. _“You spoke to me of her once did you not? Of her strength with the force. You believed she was the second coming of your kind.”_

“I was mistaken.” The desert rat, even with she managed to follow the map to Luke Skywalker what could she ever amount to? How could she be fit to carry the banner of the Knights, nor the Sith who came before them?

 _“Perhaps, perhaps not. Regardless I am eager to meet this girl with whom you feel such a…connection.”_ He linger on the last word, a tinge of disgust pooling on the syllables.

“I would not say—“

 _“Do not contradict me.  For I know your thoughts better than you yourself do.”_ Snoke’s face contorts as the words hiss from his mouth. _“She tempts you in your dreams.”_

“Tell how to resist then, how to be stronger.” The words fall from his mouth almost like a prayer. How often has he spoken these same words, in the confines of the night to the ruined remains of his grandfather’s helmet?

Snoke pays no mind to his request. _“If she is as strong with the force as you have reported then she will be great threat to us. You were a fool to allow her to escape. I expect you will not make the same mistake again.”_

“Of course not.” He cannot keep the tinge of defiance from his voice. Can the Supreme Leader not see how much stronger he has grown? Or does he believe that Ren will be overpowered so easily a second time?

“ _Quiet your insolence boy. You will find her, and bring her to me.”_

The idea ricochets inside his brain. To find her would mean leaving. “But my training is not yet complete.”

“ _Complete enough, think of this as a test. Bring her to me and you will have passed.”_ There is no mention of what will happen if he should fail, yet it hangs heavy in the air none the less.

“I understand. And how will I find her?” In the last months has no whisper of the name Rey from the mouths of the first order’s spies, not a single word.

_“Search your thoughts Kylo Ren, they will lead you to her.”_

He rises with the rustle of black fabric and the scuff of boots on stone. Ren’s mind runs like a great wheel, turning over and over.  If he is to undertake this mission then there are preparations to be made. His ship will need to be readied, provisions and coordinates taken into account.  He will need to leave word with the Knights as well, instructions in his absence. And most of all he will need to find the girl. His master’s voice calls him back. The whisper of Snoke’s voice brings his feet to a halt.

_“And Ren, remember, there is no distant moon, no corner of the galaxy that will hide you from me.”_

 

* * *

 

 

Tonight—unlike all the rest—Rey’s dream is different. She lays herself down upon the thin cot in her stone hut and when she closes her eyes no dark corridors stretch out to greet her. Instead the rosy glow of a sinking sun washes her face. Wind whips at her hair and the whine a whir of speeders fills the air.

Rey stands on a platform, a balcony of sorts, looking out upon a vast city. The mirrored towers catch the light, refracting it in a hundred glimmering chips. Far below traffic wizzes by. Unfamiliar voices rise up on the air.

Wherever this is, she’s never been here. This isn’t her memory which can only mean it must be…

“Mother?!” A shrill voice calls out. Rey turns pivoting on the spot. A small boy run’s right past her. She’s not sure how she didn’t notice him before. The child can’t be more than six or seven. Dark curls upon his head bounce and gleam in the dying light. A woman emerges from the interior of what can only be some sort of apartment. Dressed in white she scoops the boy into her arms.

The breath catches in Rey’s throat. Even though her face is unlined and here hair bares no traces of grey there is no mistaking the General Organa. And if that’s the general then who is the boy?

“Rey.”

The two figures melt away like mist on a hot day.

There he is: Kylo Ren, cloaked as ever in black. The scar she dealt him—healed now—stands out lividly. He closes the distance between them with a handful of strides. Instinctively her hand reaches to her belt. Strong fingers close around her wrist. She twists her hand trying to break free, but it’s futile.

“What are you going to do now, kill me?” She waits for him to stike her down for that is how it always end in these dreams of hers and his. But he doesn’t move.

  _Monster._

Up close Kylo Ren looks more weathered than the last time she saw him. There are tired circles under his eyes, which are as dark as ever. They shine with some enigmatic emotion she can’t quite place, but they’re familiar.

With a start she realizes: it’s the little boy staring back at her.

A lump rises in Rey’s throat. This is _his_ memory. As if instinctively a hand rises to cup his cheek. She can feel him flinch under her fingers tip, the muscles of his jaw clenching. But he doesn’t pull away. Instead his head bows, she can feel the whisper of his breath tickle the soft skin of her neck. They just brush her jaw—barely there—but where they touch seems to burn like fire.

They stand there, like two children, together clinging. Far below the city passes by. The sun sinks below the high towers.

“Rey.”

And then they are falling, down, down, crashing through canopies of green and brown. Like a commit falling out of orbit they burn in glorious conflagrations.

Rey wakes with a jolt to find she’s crying. Tears run hot and salty down her cheeks. They taste like guilt.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo Ren lies awake in the cabin of his command shuttle. His dream plays over and over like a broken hologram before his eyes. Hours slip by and sleep eludes him. Instead Ren traces the patterns in the ceiling with his eyes, trying to drown out the memories, the way Rey’s specter hands lingered coolly upon his cheeks. The flush of her cheeks, how her skin burned under his touch.

 In these moments of darkness and solitude it seems to him that the walls of his chamber shrink, until the air grows heavy with claustrophobia and he can barely stand it

Rey, he can still _feel_ her now. Her presence. Even though she must be light years away. For the first time in a long time the fire within him seems to ebb.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why yes, I have finally got the inspiration to work on/rewrite my Reylo Fic. Do I have time for this right now you may ask? No, not really. Especially since I'm off to University in less than two weeks. But the dumpster beckons never the less. Thankfully I already have several chapters completed with only editing left to do so at least for the time being I predict this fic to advance full steam ahead.  
> Please do feel free to leave a review if you have anything to say, if not see you next chapter


	2. Such Unsteady Eremophobia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eremophobia (n.) the deep fear of stillness, solitude, or deserted places.

Sand shifts under Kylo Ren’s heavy boots. Far above the noon day sun is unforgiving. Sweat beads beneath the heavy black of his uniform.

_No wonder she never came back to this place._

He knows if he’s going to trace the trail of the scavenger then he needs to start at the beginning. So he begins with the planet he never thought he’d return to. It hasn’t changed much. The little huts still crowd together in the dust and the heat. The desert still stretches just as bleak under a crystal blue sky.

And so far in his search for information he’s found nothing but sand and scraps of junk.

Through the thick visor of his mask the whole outpost seems to shimmer like a mirage. Stormtroopers wend their way through the stalls, upending tables in efforts to get the scrappers talking. Kylo Ren tries to imagine Rey here, scrubbing parts with all the rest. He can’t help but find it an injustice. A daughter of the force, she’d been born for more than that. It was a waste.

While the troopers and his knights interrogate the market place Kylo goes to the hut that stands like a nest in the center of the scrappers’ warren. He recognizes the junk boss from the images he’d pulled from Rey’s mind on Starkiller base, the one she called the _Blobfish_.  Kylo find’s he’s just as ugly in person.

“Ah, First Order. What can I help you with? Modifications? Repairs?” Plutt’s eyes the saber hung at Kylo’s waste, “We have a variety of Kuat Entralla pieces that would be compatible with your Star Destroyers.”

“I’m not here to buy. I’m looking for information about a girl who once worked here. Rey.”

He can see the recognition flicker dimly in Plutt’s eyes. “Eh? I’ve got no girl here, shame too she was one of my best scavengers. If you’re looking for a ship on the other hand…” The Crolute gestures to the ship yard where a few rather dejected looking vessels sit silently: shuttles with chipped and peeling hulls, battered looking freighters, and a few TIE fighter that look like they might not even be able to achieve liftoff.

“I did not come here for your second rate rip offs.” Kylo’s gloved fist clenches on the worn counter and blood rushes to the Crolute’s immense flabby face. The creature chokes, gurgling as if an invisible hand has clamped itself around its throat.  “I came for _information_.”

“I don’t know.” The words come out faint and wheezy.

Kylo tightens his fist.

“Sir.” The word cuts across the marketplace and Kylo Ren’s hand relaxes. The junk boss recoils with a gasp.

“Sir, I’ve found someone.” Through the dark visor of his helm he can see his lieutenant—a knight who wears an immense and ancient looking broadsword slung across his back—striding forward. His voice is slightly muddled by the metal and fabric that obscured his face. “An old woman claims to have known the girl.”

_Finally._

 

* * *

 

 

Rey asks Master Luke about him once. They’re sitting around the little fire they use for cooking. The coals burn low painting both their faces in flickering conflagrations of red and orange.

“What was he like? Before he was Kylo Ren I mean?”

The look on her master’s face makes her regret the words even as they come tumbling from her lips. His brows draw together to form a deep v. The sadness in his eyes is like a well, so deep she cannot see the bottom.

She forgets sometimes, Kylo Ren was not only his student but his nephew also.

“Ben…he was a kind child.” The flicker of the fire is reflected in his eyes. “He was very curious, always asking questions, but lonely, very lonely. And powerful.”

“Powerful?”

“Yes, even as a child he could do things with the force, well…” Luke breaks off and shakes his head. “That kind of power is dangerous, I should have known. I should have given him more guidance.”

Luke says nothing else, the crackling of the coals permeating the heavy silence that falls between them. His head is bowed. After a time he rises from the fire, turning his back and retreating to his low earthen hut. Rey remains, watching the retreating form of her teacher.

“I’m sorry I asked, master.”

Luke pauses at the entrance of his hut. He glances back at her and the corners of his eyes crinkle, “Don’t be. Instead learn from his mistakes. Don’t let your loneliness consume you like he did.”

Rey sits by the fire and watches the sparks jumping skyward in lazy spirals. The grass is cool and damp beneath her fingertips, a sensation she doesn’t think she’ll ever tire of. Master Luke’s words bounce through her brain. She can’t help but shake the feeling—sometimes in the things he says or does—that he’s trying to save her from something. But doesn’t he realize that she is nothing like Kylo Ren?

_Don’t let your loneliness consume you like he did._

 Visions of a young Ren swim before her eyes. A little black haired boy, playing as his parents argue in the next room. Their shouts permeate the think walls. The same boy a few years older, twisting and turning under the sheets of his bed. The pale man who watches him in his dreams. _The monster’s they’re coming for me._ His mother in a white dressing gown with her hair all about her shoulders, “go back to sleep Ben, they’re just nightmares.” But they’re not. Because nightmares could never feel that real.

Rey jerks forwards, expelling the air from her lungs in an exasperated huff.

 _It’s not the same_ , she tells the air. _They’re not the same_. He’d never counted down the days for a family that would never return, never been forced to spend weeks in an open dessert, until his limbs shook with exhaustion and hunger. True loneliness was sandy dunes and an azure sky, a graveyard for ships.

 Whatever visions he shows her, she tells herself that a broken family still far exceeded the absence of one.

 _I won’t pity you._ There comes no response from across the tenuous link of their minds.

She doubts he’s even listening. She’s not even sure if she wants him to.

Despite Luke’s warning and advice, Rey can still feel Kylo Ren’s thoughts on occasion. Like an asteroid that has been caught in a planets gravitational pull, she finds her minds orbiting his at the strangest of times. It usually comes when she’s off guard, as she is in sleep or meditation. But occasionally an emotion or thought that is not her own will interrupt her daily routines. Most of the time this realization is enough to snap her back to reality, throwing up hastily constructed barriers. But other times the nature of thought is so alien, so complex that she can’t help being drawn in.

His mind works in strange circles. She’s beginning to realize that. Sometimes he burns with anger, or else is calm and cold as ice, and sometimes he’s simply not there at all.

Certainly he thinks of her often. It’s a startling realization. When he trains, in tactical meetings, before he sleeps. The pull of his thoughts take on a different hue when he thinks of her. It’s something she can’t quite describe: a hunger, a possessiveness. She tells herself that it must be the fascination of having finally met someone else like him. And when she sees her own face mirrored over their mental link—illuminated by the glow of their sabers as they had fought through the woods of Starkiller Base—she puts the accompanying clench of her stomach down to nerves.

There’s no denying that stirs and anxiety within her. It itched at the edges of her thoughts until she’s half out of her mind with unease. She tells herself it’s just a result of being on Ahch-To for so long. Beyond its tranquil shores there’s a war going on.

Finn, Poe, General Organa, they’re fighting the real battles.  What can she do? Sit and stare at rocks for days? After all it’s been months with only Master Luke for company.

Some nights the nervousness—in combination with her night terrors—becomes so bad that she takes to walking down to the pebbly cove were she first arrived. She strips the shoes off her feet and lets the wave lap gently at her ankles. Far above the stars wink and flash in an endless cosmic dance. Occasionally a light will streak across the darkness, but whether it’s a passing ship or an asteroid she never knows. With the scent of salt in her nose and a fierce wind whipping at her hair she can almost drown out the rest. She can almost be alone.

But Rey’s not the only one who notices her restlessness. A week after she’d dreamed of Kylo Ren as a child Master Luke asks her if she wants to suspend her training for a time.

“You’re not progressing with your studies. Whatever has put you so on edge needs to be cleared from your mind before you can continue.”

“Isn’t it dangerous to disrupt my training this way?”

“Perhaps so, but not undoable. I myself had to walk away for a time when I was training with Master Yoda.”

“Did it help?”

“No, I walked straight into a trap and almost destroyed everything we had worked for.” Her mouth forms a little ‘oh’ but he continues on. “Still things happen for a reason, and it was the will of the force.”

He lends her the x-wing fighter he’s kept on the island all these years so she won’t have to wait a week or more for Chewie to bring the falcon. Rey can’t help but admire the condition the Starfighter is in, even after so many years exposed to the elements and ocean air.

“Don’t forget the saber.” It’s the first time he’s mentioned it since she’d held it out to him that fateful day. Rey’s hand darts to her hip where she’s fastened the hit to a strip of fabric. “I know you’re used to fighting with a quarterstaff, you might do well to with a double blade in the future perhaps. But until then this should continue to serve you as well as any.”

It’s the first times he’s truly acknowledged her as his student, and as a Jedi. Rey’s heart swells with a secret sort of pride. Still as she boards the X-wing she can’t help but think she sees traces of disappointment in Luke’s eyes.

 _It’s only for a few weeks._ She reminds herself, _I will return._

 

* * *

 

 

They find it right where the old woman said they would. The ATT is on its side, half buried in the ever shifting sand.

He walks through the blasted out shell of what once was unmistakably a home. The hem of his cloak stirs thick eddies of dust to life. They swirls like fleck of gold in the beams of sunlight that peep through the disintegrating roof. Remnants of her are everywhere: from a little doll wrapped in orange burlap lying abandoned in a corner to the packets of rations stacked carefully next to a burner. He recognizes the place from her mind. He’d seen it on star killer base as he’d searched through her head for any fragment of the map.

The far wall of the ATT draws his attention. While most of the surfaces have been left bare of any decoration or mark, here thousands of scores mar the rough metal. They form little groups of five—tallies—reaching row upon row up to the ceiling. With a finger he traces one of the scratches. A mental image flashes before his eyes: a little girl stands on her tiptoes digging a shard of metal into the walls of her prison-home.

 _You’ve been so lonely_. He’d once told her. _So afraid to leave._ However much she’d longed to escape this place a part of it would always be her home. Part of her would always been drawn back here.

Far away he feels thoughts not his own pitch and churn, as if by thinking of her Ren has summoned her own conscious to him.

Hurriedly he pulls his hand back from the wall. Where his hand lingered now existed a smooth spot free of dust and grime. The Supreme Leader had told him to trust his feelings. Once more he opens his mind, reaching out to the place where she should be.

He knows how he will find his scavenger.

When he returns to the shuttle he instructs the other Knight of Ren to take it back to the base.

“We’ll rendezvous in the Estran Sector at R-4.”

They do not ask questions and Ren watches as his shuttle ascends upward through Jakku’s crystal blue atmosphere, stirring a massive cloud of dust and sand as it goes.

 He’s going to need a ship.

 

* * *

 

 

Space is cold. It was something often said by the few pilots who tarried through the stalls of Niima Outpost searching for spare parts. They would wag their fingers, dripping head to toe in airs of superiority. But the locals—who’d lived whole lives in the dust and choking heat—scorned the notion of the cold. Therefore it was often said but seldom believed. After all Jakku was a warm planet where the temperature rarely dipped below freezing. But they’d been right of course.

It’s also very, very empty.

Rey thought she knew loneliness on the desert planet, but it’s nothing, nothing compared to the vast emptiness of deep space. Beyond the cockpit and flashing lights of the controls it seems as if the blackness stretches on forever. The only light comes in the form of dim pinpricks, given off by distant stars. Beautiful in a desolate sort of way.

The map on the control panel tells Rey her position as O-7—an area left largely uninhabited due to the violent radiation storm that tended to frequent the sector. The distance between Achc-To and D’Qar plus the many intervening systems is such that she’s been forced to make the trip in several smaller jumps. It’s not exactly the ideal place to stop. At least she’s unlikely to encounter anyone else in this sector, and with any luck the next radiation storm given off by the nearby pulsar wouldn’t be for an hour or two.

Rey surveys the control panel. Since she was a child she’d dreamed of flying an X-wing fighter, even more so since she’d seen Poe Damerron fly. She’s generally familiar with their build too, after having spent years picking them apart for Unkar Plutt. Luke’s fighter however, appears to have undergone at least a half dozen custom modifications. It had taken her over an hour just to figure out how everything worked.

Sighing she leans her head back against the seat. Weeks of poor sleep have taken their toll.

It would be so easy to close her eyes, even for just a few minutes.

A vision of her old ATT swims before her eyes. The familiar bed, the tally marks on the wall. She’d spent her time on Jakku counting the days until she left and now that she has she feels no desire to return. Still her old home beckons to her with a faded sort of nostalgia.

 _I must be dreaming._ Her old doll, wrapped up a piece of orange fabric she’d torn from an old resistance uniform comes into focus.

 _Rey._ The word reverberates through her mind like a cannon blast. Gloved hands come into focus, the doll held tight in their grasp.

Rey jerks forward with a start, banging her head against one of the many levers. Her breath comes in ragged uneven gasps. She’s sure the images must be hers. After all there’s no way he could possibly be on Jakku. Hesitantly she probes outward, spanning the silent void that lies between their two minds.

Kylo Ren waits on the other side. _Rey._

 _Get out!_ Rey slams one of her fists down on the controls, recoiling with her mind as fast as she is able.

Rey realizes her mistake too late as one of the sensors on her control panel lights up with a soft ping. She doesn’t need it to tell her about the ship that has just emerged from hyperspace. It looms beyond the window of her cockpit. And what’s more she can _feel_ it.

The freighter is unpolished durasteel, battered and beaten from what she can only assume is years of smuggling and less-than-legal cargo hauling. It hangs eerily above her. Desperately she tries to steer her fighter away, but it’s no good. A tractor beam from the larger vessel has already latched on to her, gluing her in place.

Rey’s heart beats erratically fast. Pirates probably, she considers opening up her com channel to try and cut a deal with them. Tentatively she enters the code that will give the freighter access to her communications.

 _“You should be more guarded with your thoughts.”_ The voice crackles both over the com link as well as within the confines of her brain, each version a ghastly echo of the other. Rey’s heart nearly stops. _“It makes finding you hardly a challenge.”_

She knows what is coming. Rey lunges at her transmitter, punching in a hurried distress signal. A second later the creeping paralysis overcomes her.

 _What do you want?_ Her lips are sealed so instead she casts her thoughts out to him. Meanwhile her ship is drawn inexorably into the belly of the freighter. As she rises she notices that it doesn’t appear to have any cargo.

_Isn’t that obvious?_

Of course, because she’s the cargo.

The hiss of Hydraulics tells her when the doors seal, like a trap snapping shut. She rises and light floods her face.

Kylo Ren stands above her in a grimy loading bay, arms crossed in vague annoyance. It’s like something out of her dreams. Only in this nightmare variant the dull metal of his mask obscures the entirety of his face. She can see the gleam of his saber at his waist.

The cockpit lifts of its own accord, coming free with a hiss and a pop.

Rey expects he will continue to immobilize her, maybe use the force to drag her forcibly from the fighter before he kills her. It’s then something of a shock to find that she can use her limbs once more. Carefully she pushes herself up and out onto the loading bay floor.

Kylo Ren does not move, not even an inch. Carefully she edges around the fighter. If she can just put it between herself and him then…a hand drifts to the saber at her waist.

“Don’t try it.” With a flick of his wrist she goes ridged as a slab of stone. So much for a daring escape.

Despite the strain of her muscles she can’t break free of the unnatural rigidness. Only her head and neck are left free. Last time he’d contained her thusly he’d also bent her mind into unconsciousness. She wonders if he’ll do the same now.

“Finally.” His voice is tinged metallic by the modulator in his mask. Through that blank slate of a face he regards her, fingers hovering inches from her forcibly upturned face. A chill crawls down Rey’s spine. She could almost swear he was examining her.

Summoning all the control of her body she can muster she spits. The glob of saliva lands on the black plane of his mask.

He makes no move to wipe it away.

“If you insist on acting like a savage you’ll leave me no choice but to tie you up.” Even with all the metal and the modulator she can hear the tinge of anger color his words. Always anger for him, always emotion, every word a battle. She knows because she feels it too, though whether it is spilling across from his mind to hers or if it something deeper, something internal she doesn’t know. She longs to rise up and cast off his restraints. The saber still hangs at her belt. Her hand itches to feel the cool metal in her palm.

 _It’s not the Jedi way._ Luke would tell her.

Rey raises her chin and averts her gaze. She tries to slow her breathing until the rush of air reaches pace of feigned normality. She’ll watch, wait for her time.

Kylo Ren marches her down the flickering hallways of the freighter. She sees no sign of any crew aboard.

When they reach the cockpit he keeps good on his promises, binding her tightly to the copilot’s seat. The moment he’s done she begin to wriggle but it’s hardly any use. She stops trying to break the ropes when he confiscates her weapon. Even if she could free herself she has no way to fight. Maybe if she can keep him talking long enough the resistance will pick up her distress call. It’s a wild hope but not inconceivable.

“Where’d you get the freighter?” She’s sure it’s a Correlian, not something she’d expect to be common among the first order’s fleet.

“I borrowed it,” he turns to regard her through his visor, “from your old friends on Jakku.”

Rey’s heart sinks. So he _had_ been there.

 He must read the read the expression on her face, or else she’s left her thoughts completely unguarded, because he turns to glance at her. “You’re afraid for them.” Through his mask his expression unreadable. “I only did what was necessary.”

It’s not exactly an answer, nor is it reassuring in the least. Not when the First Order’s version of necessary has been known to include slaughtering whole planets.

 _So naïve, to think that I am the monster._ The thought—his she’s sure—curls between them. Rey flinches.

“Their sacrifice was necessary to destroy the corruption of the republic. When you have spent more time with the Supreme leader you will begin to realize this.”

“Stay out of my head!”

“As you stay out of mine?! You think I enjoy having you root around inside my head while I sleep?”

“That’s different! I can’t control that!”

Something on the scanner pings. The whole control panel lights up with a faint plink plink.

Kylo Ren swears.

In all their bickering they’ve overlooked the most immediate danger: a radiation storm, given off by the nearby pulsar, moving fast.  Rey can already see the first wave of radiation on the scanner. Kylo Ren taps at one of the displays with a gloved finger but the freighter remains motionless, hanging in empty space.

“What are you doing?”

“We can wait it out.”

“Are you crazy? We need to move! Now!” Rey can hear the tinges of hysteria that grip at the edges of her voice.

The freighter jerks, lurching forward. All the light dim before flaring up again. Warning lights blare red across control panel. The hyper drive is laboring. ___ will have put and compressor on it and it’s already overheated from the journey here.

“There’s too much stress on the hyperdrive!”

“Do you see another option?” Even with the modulator she fancies she can hear an undercurrent of fear color Kylo’s voice as he punches in the coordinates.

“You’re insane!”

With an ungainly lurch and whine of a laboring engine the ship throws them forward. Rey’s stomach leaps to her throat. The stars around blur into streaks of fading luminescence. The lights on the control panel whir with alarm.

For a handful of second Rey believes they’ll make it. That believe only lasts momentarily. The freighter shudders out of hyperspace, tipping forward so violently that Kylo is thrown forward out of his chair. Only her restraints save Rey from doing the same, though she almost cracks her head on a low hanging metal bar. The whine of the engines flickers out.

Outside the thick viewport a planet wheels into view, coming at them far too fast. A huge grey-green thing, it looms on their horizon. When they’d fallen from hyperspace they must have been caught in its gravitational pull. Now it’s only a matter of time before they fall through what looks like a very dense atmosphere.

Kylo Ren pounds on the control panel. Rey doesn’t need the flurry of jumbled thoughts and images to know that he’s panicking. Despite his efforts he engines remain silent. He swears through the thick metal of his mask, in a last ditch effort drawing his saber to slash at the non-responsive controls.

A definitive jolt informs them they’ve entered the atmosphere. It strips at the durasteal plating, tearing off little pieces and sending streaks of burning ozone trailing behind them like streamers. Rey knows that the chances of surviving a landing like this are next to none.

For some reason Rey thought it would feel different, knowing you were about to die. Instead she watches with a muddled sort of fascination as the planet rushes up at them. She can see mountains and dense forest. A second lurch sends her head jerking forward to smack into the metal bar she only just avoided earlier. Spots of black and red dance in front of her eyes. Light rushes up at her, warm, comforting, and somehow familiar.

 The last thing she sees is Kylo Ren arms outstretched, as they fall like a meteor to earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And I'm back with chapter two! Now I acknowledge that this chapter is a bit heavy on Rey's POV and less so on Kylo. Just expect that their POV time will fluctuate depending on chapter and who is best fit to narrate each particular part of the story. As always I hope the chapter was enjoyable. Any feedback is much appreciated.


	3. Under Brumous Heavens

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brumous (adj.) of grey skies; filled with clouds or fog; sunless weather

Something tickles Rey’s cheek. Her eyes flicker open, squinting as they adjust to the dim lighting. The petals of a bright yellow flower swim into view, surrounded by spikey green leaves.

 The greenery is suspended only a few centimeters from her face. Rey blinks once, twice, and three times. _Where is she? What is she doing here? And why is her head pounding like she’d been trampled by a Luggabeast?_

Memories come flooding back like the waves that crashing against the shores of Luke’s island on Ahch-To. Rey lets out a little yelp, wriggling against the restrains that hold her body. She’s upside down, suspended from the wreckage of the freighter cockpit. If she strains her neck she can just make out more scattered remains of the freighter jumbled among the mud and moss. _The ship must have broken up in the fall._

She wriggles and twists until she can free a hand. From there it’s possible to untie the rest of the knots with only relative difficulty.

Finally she manages to extricate herself from the metal chair, feet brushing lightly against the springy grass. Glass and metal shrapnel litter the ground around the ruin of the cockpit. Rey has little doubt that her restraints had saved her from being imbedded on the jagged fragments of durasteal imbedded in the earth only an arm’s length away.

While the viewport is now nothing more than a twisted and empty frame it takes her several excruciating minutes to ease herself past the jagged metal.

As she steps out of the wreckage her feet sink deep into a squelchy layer of mud and leaf litter. The pain in her head is causes her vision to blur and spin. For a moment she is looking at a wall of solid green. Rey leans against the side of the freighter and waits for the dizzy spell to pass. When her vision clears she finds herself in the midst of a dense jungle. Thick foliage crowds in and far above twisting tree branches and swirling mist obscure any trace of the sky. On Takodana she had marveled at the amount of green, but here the foliage only feels suffocating.

Strange animal calls echo through the dark woods. They’re enough to put Rey’s already frayed nerves on edge.

As she picks through the ruins she finds no trace of Kylo Ren. He had not been restrained like her and she guesses that he was thrown free of the ship when they’d crashed through the underbrush. She probes the space that usually lay between their consciousnesses and feels nothing. No stray emotions or thoughts echo between them. She can only hope that the impact killed him.

Kneeling down in the mud Rey inspects the smoldering remains of the engines.

There’s no doubt that the ship will never fly again. The engines are a smoking wreck and the remains of the hyperdrive lay scattered for a hundred metres or more. However, at the speed they had been falling Rey’s surprised how much of the ship survived the impact. _I’m lucky to be alive._ At the speed they had fallen they should have been annihilated on impact.

Still there’s not much aboard the freighter, and far less that’s survived intact. The structure itself is unstable and Rey is careful as she picks her way through what’s left of the cargo hold. Behind a set of twisted wall panels Rey unearths a few dusty packets of rations. If Kylo really had picked up this ship from Jakku then who knows how long they’ve been here. There’s also a metal canister that when unscrewed emits the sickly-sweet smell of bacta. Back on Jakku such a find would have equated to a small fortune, but now stranded on an unfamiliar planet it’s little enough to survive on. She ties her finds up in a piece of old tarp, slinging it over her shoulder.

Slightly unbalanced by the weight over her shoulder she stumbles out of the wreckage.

The crackle of a blade is the only warning she gets. Rey throws herself to the side one hand—hitting the ground with enough force to make her already sore head ache even more. Above a ray of red light slices through the air transecting the place she had been a moment ago. Kylo Ren stands above her. His helmet is gone and the scar she dealt him stands out livid and angry across his features. Mud cakes his robes and he moves with a strange limping gate. He raises the saber again. She rolls away, springing up, one hand going instinctively to her waste. No saber hangs at her belt. With a curse she remembers that Kylo had taken it from her when he’d tied her up. Desperately she tries to edge back towards the ruined cockpit. Perhaps it had fallen free when they crashed.

Kylo staggers after her. There’s blood on his hands.

“Looking for this?” With a horrible sinking feeling she sees her saber clutched in his left hand. He limps towards her slashing at the air all around her. Without a weapon all she can do is run.

As with the last time they fought Rey doesn’t think he’s aiming to kill her. His limp slows him but pain also seems to make his strokes wilder. He might only be looking to injure her but Rey thinks he’s just as likely to take her head as a hand.

He corners her by the blasted out remains of the cabin. Rey can feel the heat from the metal seeping through her clothes and into her skin. Rey closes her eyes and draws upon every bit of the surrounding energy she can muster.

“Stop!” The force it hits him like a wall and she sees him stagger, his feet dragging to a standstill. His muscles twitch but he does not move. His saber crackles mid arc. She edges around him cautiously. He still has her saber but she doesn’t dare try to retrieve it. Her hold on him is shaky at best. “If you kill me you’re dead too.” She feels the truth in those words, the gravity of the situation. They were stranded on an unknown planet with few supplies, no way to leave, and no way to call for help. Panic rises in her throat and her grip on the force wavers and breaks.

Kylo collapses in the mud, his injured leg folding beneath him. He hits the ground with a muffled cry, lightsaber extinguished.

Rey leaves him there. Out of the periphery of her vision she sees him drag himself up and prop against a tree. He does not attack her again—either for lack of strength or the realization that he needs her to survive—instead watches her with a distrust she shares.

Hesitantly Rey turns back to contemplate the wrecked freighter. She doesn’t want to turn her back on him for too long. The freighter isn’t fit to form any sort of shelter, but maybe…When she looks back Kylo hasn’t moved.

Turning her back once more she drags a sheet of durasteal plating away from the wreckage. Kylo frowns.

“ _What_ are you doing?” His voice is tinged with a snide superiority she doesn’t care for.

“Making us a shelter, unless you’d rather sleep out in the cold and damp.”

He continues to scrutinize as she collects more fragments and begins to fit them together. Most of the metal is crumbled, torn, and ruined. Scrap metal like this would only have value it was melted down. Still it serves admirably for Rey’s purposes.

 The steal is heavy and combined with the dense humidity of the jungle air Rey soon finds herself drenched in sweat. Escaped strands of hair hang lankly around her face. Throughout it all Kylo doesn’t move an inch, instead leans up against the trunk of a tree. Irritation prickles up inside her.

After hauling one particularly large fragment she snaps.

“You know this would go a lot faster if you helped.”

He says nothing, just continues to watch her with that inscrutable gaze. Fine then.  She turns her back to him and tries to ignore the way the hairs on the back of her neck rise.

               

* * *

 

 

While she works he watches. There’s something fascinating about the way she sifts through the ashes of the freighter. Her tanned arms pull fragments from the wreckage and from those scraps she makes a little home. Perhaps it is her instinct now after so many years, to find hidden use in broken, ruined things.

Strands of her hair have fallen free down her back and Kylo is struck by a sudden curiosity to see her with her hair completely down. He’s only ever seen it in those ridiculous buns.

The ache of his leg is a constant distraction. It had been caught beneath him when he’d been thrown free of the crash. It slows his movements and he knows that it gives him a distinct disadvantage in a fight. When the First Order finds them he’ll have to request a bacta treatment. He won’t have to wait long. His last transmission had gone out from the Estran sector somewhere near R-5. By now the First Order will have converged on the area and will no doubt be searching the nearby planets for wreckage.

Apparently satisfied she stands back to admire the structure. Its crude, more of a lean-to than any proper structure. She’s laid a tarp on the ground beneath it but Kylo doubts that it will be enough to keep the muck out. The hem of his robes are caked with the stuff and it’s everywhere underfoot.

Rey sits on her tarp under the scavenged cover, her feet tucked up neatly underneath her.

He drags himself over to the shelter and flops down. She glances over, taking in his leg which sticks out in front of him awkwardly. After a moment of apparent contemplation she reaches into her makeshift bag and pulls out a metal canister.

“Here.” She tosses it to him. He unscrews the lid to find it half full of Bacta solution.

“You shouldn’t help me.” He eyes it suspiciously. She’ll stand a better chance against him in a fight if he’s injured and she knows it.

“The odds of surviving are better with two of us.” He can hear her bitterness coloring each word of the admission. “I don’t want to die on this slim bucket.”

“You’re still my prisoner you know.”

She shrugs as if it couldn’t possibly matter. In a way he supposes it doesn’t. The First Order will find them soon enough, then they can deal with the specifics of their situation.

Rey stands.

“Where are you going?”

“To find water. There must be a stream or something nearby.” She holds out an expectant hand. “Prisoner or not I need my saber back.”

“Why should I do that?”

She jabs a thumb at the jungle. “We don’t know what kinds of things are out there.”

Grudgingly he hands it over.

She’s gone long enough for him to dress the wounds on his leg. Half the skin on his calf has been torn away and his knee cap appears to be in the wrong place. Angry red lines crisscross the skin of his thigh. The best he can do is apply bacta to the surface wounds and hope that enough is absorbed to help mend some of the internal damage. He only needs it to bear his weight until the First Order finds them.

He senses Rey before she remerges from the foliage. She comes in to view toting a makeshift bucket filled with water. Even when their minds are not in direct contact he is aware of her, like an itch under his skin or a faint whisper in his ear.

She throws herself down, carefully maintaining a healthy distance between the two of them.

Kylo is grateful for it. Already his blood burns to be so close, threads of the force scalding his insides. Any closer and it might overwhelm him.

_Embrace it, just let go._ Forcibly he suppresses the suggestion. A time will come for raw unrestrained power, for bloodshed and the crackle of lightsabers but now is not it. For now he needs the Scavenger girl.

The soft patter of water hitting leaves reverberates through the jungle though it’s a full thirty seconds before the drops reach the understory. Rey bounds to her feet causing Kylo to reach instinctively for his saber. Now that she has her own back it can only be a matter of time before she strikes. Whatever attack he expects it never comes. Instead Rey scrambles out from under the cover of their shelter. 

She stands in the deluge with hands outstretched and eyes closes. Water sheets down her face and soaks into her clothes. From across the thread that connects their minds he senses her wonder.

“It’s only rain.”

Her head snaps around, luminous eyes finding his. The light fades. “I know.”

She comes back to the shelter, sinking down onto the tarp. She pulls a few scraps of metal from somewhere and begins to tinker with them. But every once and a while he sees her gaze drawn back to the thick streams of water that fall from the metal awning. How strange she is. He finds so much he does not understand in her.

It’s the light in her that fascinates him, he’s sure. He does not crave it as he once had thanks to his master’s tutelage, but still like an insect is drawn to a candle he can feel the pull of it. _I must be stronger._ She is a test, he is starting to realize, one Snoke full well expects him to fail.

 

* * *

 

 

That night they lay with as much distance between them as is possible within the tiny shelter. Kylo does not sleep, at least not to his recollection. Beside him he can hear Rey’s steady breathing but he does not dare probe her mind to see if she’s actually asleep.

The morning dawns grey and gloomy. Rey doles out meager portions, then rises shouldering her bag and tucking her saber into her belt.

When he questions her she only responds, “We don’t know this planet is uninhabited. I want to see if there are any settlements nearby.”

Somehow Kylo doesn’t think so. Something about this place lingers in the corners of his memories, eerily familiar.

Still he follows her away from the camp and into the underbrush. Rey may not have run away in the night but he doesn’t trust her to not try and escape once she’s put a swath of the jungle between them. She uses her saber to cut a path and Kylo follows behind with his uneven limp. The bacta has greatly improved the function of his leg but it’s still far from healed.

After a while the ground begins to tilt upward. The vegetation becomes unrulier often causing them to stop so Rey can spend several minutes slicing through particularly thick patches of vines.

Then without warning the dense vegetation yields. Stone monoliths loom out of the gloom.  Bellow the ridgeline a valley pools between low lying hills dotted with crumbling stone and metal. Choked with weeds and vines, crumbling with disuse the building climb skyward like broken teeth. In the fog it’s impossible to tell how many structures there are as they stretch on into the grey mist.

Beside him Rey gasps.

She begins clambering down the steep hillside. Kylo descends more slowly. The packed dirt and mud soon yields to stone slab which in turn yields to cracked duracrete.

Together they walk between ancient ruins on a crumbling avenue. The buildings—broken and twisted as they are by the overgrowth—seem to crowd together, as if they seek to block out the light of the distant sun with their magnitude.

Kylo’s skin prickles. The fire in his stomach flips. He knows this place. Or at least knows of it. A hallowed city dredged up from the bowels of history. Even the Supreme Leader would not dare to dread among the tombs here.

 “We must have crash landed on Dromund Kaas.” The jungle is flushed with a sticky heat but here a chill seems to linger in the air.

 Rey frowns. “I’ve never heard of it. Does anyone live here?”

 “Kaas City. The capital of an empire that no longer exists.”

 “No, not anymore.”

They continue on, soft and swift as shadows between the ancient buildings. Kaas City is sprawling. In ages past Kylo estimates it could have housed millions. The streets would not have been so empty then, not the air so quiet. The path leads them to the steps of an immense citadel of stone and glass, gilt with rusting durasteel. Secrets of the force would have laid guarded in this here, watched over by black robed acolytes and Sith Emperors of old.

Rey stiffens but he brushes forward, climbing the steps as best he can.

The citadel doors open upon a cavernous atrium where saplings push their way through the tiled floor. Among the lofty rafters strange reptilian creatures perch. It is empty and silent as a crypt. A smaller side passage leads them into a dusty room lit by a few patches of sunlight that spill through the missing panes of a glass dome. Shelves lined with metal prisms glow red along every wall.

_Sith holocrons._ Kylo’s hands ache to reach out at grab one. The secrets they must contain, lost eons ago to the rest of the world, lie beyond the knowledge of even the Supreme Leader. It is a travesty that they should lie forgotten among the decay of a crumbling city.

He resolves to come back here when the war is over.

A creak steals through the air, nothing more than the faint suggestion of machinery. Across the room Rey holds one of the holocrons in her palm. His next action is purely instinctual.

_“Down!”_ He throws a wall of force at Rey who drops as if she’s been stunned. The cry of outrage turns to one of shock as a laser cuts through the air where she had been only seconds before. The air smells like smoke as the laser ignites the eddying dust. It last for a fraction of a second before disappearing into whatever concealed apparatus was hidden in the wall.

Rey stares at the wall, at the holocron in her hand, and finally at Kylo.

“Why did you save me?”

He crosses his arms across his chest. “The odds of surviving are better with two of us.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rey sits on the dusty floor of the holocron vault. Shock and also confusion course through her in equal measure. She almost died and _he_ had saved her.

Kylo is still looking at her and Rey feels suddenly uncomfortable meeting his gaze. She directs her eyes at the holocron instead. It’s unlike the others, cuboid where they are triangular. It fits warmly in her palm as if it emits some inner warmth. She slips it into her bag as discretely as she can.

Rey pushes herself up and dusts off her clothes. Not that it’s much use. The crash, rummaging through the wreckage, and a night spend in the jungle have conspired to make her filthy.

A small door, hung ajar on crooked hinges leads off the holocron vault. She nods to it with her chin and together they move forward with wordless agreement. After the trap she triggered neither of them are eager to stay in the vault.

The moment they step through the door Rey regrets the decision. Fear clenches in her stomach like a fist. She makes to turn but Kylo continues forward, shattering the darkness with the crackling glow of his saber.

The air is different down here: cooler but also somehow damper. Water drips down the walls in a steady plink plink. It’s also quieter without the noises of the jungle. But the real difference is the smell. The stench of decay cloys at Rey’s nose. She lifts a piece of fabric to cover her nose but it does little to block it out.

To Rey it feels as if the air is full of whispers. Traces of the force that linger half-forgotten in the darkness. They pull at Rey’s mind, echoing ancient words. She tries to block them out but they scorch her defences like fire.

_Peace is a lie, there is only passion._

The hair on the back of Rey’s neck rises. Everything about this place feels wrong, feels rotten, feels dead. But her feet keep dragging her forward. Curiosity and fear pull her to see what lies at the end of the tunnel.

_Through passion, I gain strength._

A drop of water lands on Rey’s forehead. She lets out a small exclamation.

_Through strength, I gain power._

At the end of the corridor lies a low archway.  Beyond is a circular room. Statues line the walls, features all but obliterated by time and the by the water that trickled down their stone faces. The voices feel louder here, so much so that Rey could swear there is someone else here, waiting in the dark.

“Hello?” It’s hardly a whisper but it seems to echo.

“Shh.” Kylo presses a finger to his lips. She wonders if he hears the voices as she does, if he listens to them.

_Through power, I gain victory._

Kylo does not look at her. He is standing a rigidly as if he too is made of stone. His eyes are fixed upward at the blank faces of the statues, lips moving wordlessly. His saber hangs at his side all but forgotten. Rey probes his mind and her conscious passes right through the spot where his ought to be as if it were made of water. She cannot sense him at all. She may as well be alone in this room. Perhaps this place, where the dark side lies so heavy that it is in every shadow and stone, has lent him some power to hide himself that she does not possess.

_Through victory, my chains are broken._

Rey raises the beam of her saber higher as if the action will fend off the shadows. The pool of blue light shines off many metal objects, lying discarded beneath the feet of the statues. Rey stoops, her fingertips brushing against the slimy stone of the floor. They’re sabers. Every size and shape is represented, with crude designs that speak to a long passed age.

Her finger itch forward as if they are drawn by some invisible magnet. Her hand closes over one of the ancient blades. The hilt is smooth and cool in her palm. A rush of something that is not fear surges through her. The blade ignites with a whoosh, twin blades bathing Rey’s face in red light.

_The Force shall free me._

With a wordless cry the blade falls from Rey’s hand, extinguishing its light against the stone.

Kylo stirs, turning to look at her for the first time since they’ve entered the chamber. His presence brushes against hers once more as if it had never been gone. Fear radiates between them.

“What is this place? An armory?” She looks to the sabers.

He shakes his head. “I think it is a tomb.”

Rey looks once more at the blank faces of the statues, watching with sightless eyes. “We should leave, this place is all wrong.” She turns leaving the saber discarded where it had fallen. Kylo scoops it up in one pale hand. He proffers it to her. Rey shakes her head. “I don’t want that thing.”

He slips it into her bag as if he had not heard her words. “Keep it. The color suits you.”

 

* * *

 

 

They waste no time in returning to the camp, following the rough trail they’d made that morning. Rey is eager to put as much space between herself and the ruins of Kaas City as possible and as far as she can tell so is Kylo.

The silence between them stretches absolute. Rey does not ask Kylo what he’d seen in the catacombs. She’s not sure she wants to know.

Like before she prepares their rations, this time using the portion packets to make a mean gruel. Rey’s not sure if Kylo even knows how to prepare food. After all he’s been looked after at least in part for his entire life.

She pours their means into two tin cups retrieved from the wrecked freighter.

As she hands Kylo the cup her fingers brush against his. A wave of electricity zaps between them. He jerk’s his hand back, dashing the cup against the tarped floor of the shelter. Rey rubs her own hand, eyebrows drawn together in a look of sheer perplexing. The skin tingles where they’d touched.

He is looking at her but Rey cannot meet his eyes. Nor can she offer any explanation of what just happened.

Tension stretches between them, a wire stretched taught, ready to snap at the slightest suggestion. Whatever the cause it pulls at her in the same way the darkness had pulled at her in the catacombs, like fire, heat, or power. And she knows that she tugs at him in the same way.

Kylo reaches out to her with his hand again but Rey draws back shaking her head. “Please don’t.” She’s afraid what will happen if he touches her again. She’s afraid she won’t be able to control it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here's chapter 3. It took me a tad bit longer than anticipated as not only did it come out longer than I mean it to (And then had to be edited down) but also because I was at a volunteer function while I was trying to finish it. But here it is! Also as you will be able to tell from this chapter I'm drawing on some Extened materiel for this story (ie Dromund Kaas), but I don't plan for the extended stuff to become to intensive. The story still mostly focuses on Kylo Ren, Rey, and other characters/events taking place around TFA. Anyways I hope everyone enjoyed it. As always any feedback is greatly apreciated.  
> Additionally I'm not sure when the next chapter will be up since I'm leaving for Uni this week. I intend to continue writing while I'm there of course but I also expect the first week or so to be a bit hectic. Still, I'll be writing as fast as I can. Until next chapter!


	4. Zyzygy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Syzygy (n.) an alignment of celestial bodies; a conjunction or opposition, especially of the moon with the sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> nsfw ensues

Time slides away in silence.

The tension that winds itself in Kylo’s limbs is stretched taught, rubber ready to snap. He’s not sure how much more waiting he can tolerate.

_Only a few more days, surely_. Patience has never been his strong suit. Especially not now.

He both looks forward to and dread the day when the First Order ships descend through Dromund Kaas’ thick atmosphere. Rey is still his prisoner, though she may debate that fact. But he is under no delusion that she will come quietly. Whatever truce they have between them will disintegrate the moment the Finalizer drops into orbit.

Already it is wearing thin. Like two cornered animals he and Rey lurk at opposite ends of the meager camp. Being so close to her, it wear at him constantly even as it must wear on her. He can feel Rey trying to suppress the link on her end. She will fight it until the last in her own stubborn attempt to draw a line between them.

But he knows she can feel it even if she will not admit it. The same electricity crackles in her blood that scorches him.

A part of him wants to touch her again, to feel the exhilaration of the force coursing between them. He craves the rush of power like a drug. But it’s a dangerous sort of drug because once he starts he’s not sure he’ll be able to stop.

And where _is_ the kriffing First Order? It shouldn’t be taking them this long to find him. There are only two habitable planets in this system and their scanners should easily have been able to pick up the wreckage by now, foliage or no.

 It would be just like Hux to make him wait. He can imagine the General’s smug face when he’d heard that Kylo had crashed. He had been insufferable since the destruction of Starkiller, when he had found Kylo in the woods, dying the snow red with his own blood. From the occasional probe into Hux’s mind Kylo knew that the General wished he had left him there. But even Hux couldn’t disobey a direct order from the Supreme Leader. If Snoke ordered Kylo to be found, he would find him. However, if the Supreme Leader had forbid a rescue team…

_“Snoke is using you for your power, when he gets what he wants, he’ll crush you.”_ The words of his fa—Han Solo come floating back to him.

He tamps the memory down, back to whatever forgotten corner of his mind it had come from. _You were wrong._ Snoke will not use him, if anything he will use Snoke. It’s something he has always known, even since he was a child, afraid of the dark and voices that lurked in it. It is _his_ destiny. And after what he had seen in the catacombs of Kaas City he is all the more certain of it. _The time is coming._

He’s is still trying to fully understand what he’d seen in the tombs beneath Dromund Kaas. He dreams of it at night and it haunts him during the day. He spends long hours while Rey cooks or sleeps or fiddles with machinery pondering and puzzling out a meaning to the vision. The cavern, the throne, the way their breath had hung like mist in the air, and the way her eyes had glittered like gold.

Visions of that sort were always fickle, or so the Supreme Leader said. They might be the future, or the past, or contingent upon a certain set of conditions. Still it had felt so real. A promise of a new tomorrow. The will of the Force was fey but it had brought them here for a reason. Kylo is just beginning to grasp what that reason is.

Across the camp Rey sits with her legs crossed tinkering with her odds and ends. The first time he’d seen her playing with the pieces of machinery he’d tried to identify them. But the few lessons in mechanics he’d received as a child were so long ago that the memory of them has all but fled from his mind. He’d never had much aptitude for fixing things anyways.

He thinks of asking her. But the stony silence between them is like a heavy curtain. He fears to breach it again.

They are alike, them two. Raised on loneliness and hunger (albeit of differing sorts). Children of the force who grew up in a world that was not made for them.

Kylo will erase that world someday. He will tear it down and watch it burn around him for its injustices.

But they are different too. She marvels at little things like rain and flowers. They lend her a softness he cannot understand. A child of negation, she clings stubbornly to the light with a hidden strength that belies her slight frame. If only she could see what he has seen, know what he now knows. She would see the ways of the Jedi and of Luke Skywalker for what they were: outdated, archaic, weak.  

He thinks to push through her mind. If he delves deep enough perhaps he will find understanding. He will find what makes her tick, and he will understand what it is about her that captures his fascination.

He closes his eyes and extends a mental probe to her. He finds she’s full of the sandy expanses of Jakku under a mid-day sun. Sun beats down upon her skin and wind born sand whips at her hair. He sees her ATT, not abandoned as he had seen it, but homey and lived in as Rey remembers it. But it is not empty as it would have been when she’d lived there. Faces crowd into the small space, clamoring for attention. The resistance pilot is there, and the traitor. At encountering the imprint of FN2187 upon her mind Kylo feels a stab of anger that feels somehow misplaced. Then he sees himself as she has seen him: a monstrous form in black, a masked figure, a man with eyes that—

Rey rebuffs him with a none-too-gentle push of her conscious. Kylo recoils. He opens his eyes expecting to meet her glare but she is not looking at him, still focused on her bits and pieces.

He contents himself with watching her, studying the gently curve of her neck as she hunches over her work, the quickness of her fingers. She’s not as skinny as the last time they’d met. Years of malnutrition will ensure that she will always be short, but she no longer looks so much like the dessert rat she was.

She would make a fine knight he knows. Skywalker will have taught her to suppress her anger, but oh the power it could fuel. Someday he will teach all this, all the secrets his uncle did not dare to. For now he will wait. She is not ready, not until she relinquishes her choke hold on the light. But just as he knew it was his destiny to kill Han Solo she cannot fight the fate he has seen for her. She cannot resist the call of like to like that linger between them two.

_All is as the force will it._

Someday, sooner perhaps than later he thinks, she will sit beside him in the darkness.

 

* * *

 

 

“How much do you know about force bonds?” The question spills through the silence in swirling white mist of midday.

Rey looks up from the pieces of machinery she’s been fiddling with, pieces of the broken transmitter. “A what?”

“A force bond, the connection that we share between us.” The way he says the word, connection, sounds too compliant for her ears. As if it was something they had chosen instead of something that was pushed upon them. “Did Skywalker tell you anything of it?”

Rey hesitates. The training she’d received on Achc-To had been remedial at best but she’s still wary to reveal any of it to Kylo.

“He told me I needed to guard my mind from you. That you would use it against me.”

“Of course he would fear it. My uncle has always been a slave to the ways of the past.” It’s the first time she’s heard him refer to any member of his family by their relation. There’s a bitterness to the words and she thinks they must taste wrong in his mouth.

“Was he wrong? You _did_ use it against me.”

He scowls. His face, she’s begun to notice, is strangely expressive and it lends him a sense of vulnerability she would not have previously associated with Kylo Ren. Perhaps that’s why he wears a mask. “That was a necessity. Nothing more.”

_Was it?_ _Where you so desperate to have me that you were willing to risk a solar storm?_ But then Rey knows that Kylo’s perception of necessary varies from her own by lightyears.

With the soft buzz of wings a spindly insect lands on the piece of machinery that Rey still holds in her hand. Its translucent purple wings shimmer as it probes the circuits with one long antenna. Rey considers it for a second before gently blowing, causing it to take flight on the current of her breath.

She looks up to find Kylo watching her with a puzzled look.

She wipes off the scrap on her shirt. “Do you know what that was?”

“A butterfly.” His tone borders on incredulity.

“Hmm.” She looks up and watches the butterfly spiral skyward. “So how did it happen? The force bond I mean.”

The looks of puzzlement melts from his face and is replaced by something darker, more intense. He picks at a patch of moss by his side. “I believe that, on Starkiller base, when I touched you mind—“

“ _Invaded_ it you mean.”

Kylo waves a hand dismissively and Rey bristles. “—I touched something deep in your consciousness, a likeness between us. The like called to like and it forged a connection. It’s how I can sense your thoughts, your presence, and how you can reach into my dreams. The whole galaxy could lie in between us and we would still be able to feel the other.”

  _A likeness between us_. The way he says those words sends a shiver that is not entirely discomfort racing down her spine. Kylo sets them together where, in all cases she has tried to set them apart. He will see only the likenesses and ignore the differences as if they are two halves of a single whole. _The whole galaxy could lie between us…_

_“_ Is there any way to break it?”

“Would you want to?”

“Well it hardly seems practical. We’re on opposite sides of a war after all, you could steel tactical information from my mind.”

Annoyance flickers across his features. “The First Order has more than enough intelligence on your tactics. I would hardly need to go rooting around in your mind for it.”

“Still, you said it yourself with the bond intact you’ll always be able to find me. I won’t be able to hide myself from you.”

“Just as you will always be able to find me. It goes both ways.”

“Why would I want to find you?” The words are harsher than she intends them.

 He leans forward, his impressive height compacted somehow as he strains forward. “Wouldn’t you? There are so many thing you still have to learn.”

 “I believe I refused that offer last time.” She tries to keep her voice cool but the intensity of his gaze sets a waver to her voice that was not there before. They are two wild animals, she knows. They circle each other, each waiting for the other to crack, to break, to fall apart.

He sits back, resting against the tree that has become his haunt. “There is no else like us Rey.” In the dark of his eyes there is a hunger so great that Rey fears it will swallow her whole. “No one else in the entire galaxy.”

 

* * *

 

 

He is the first to crack.

The quiet following their exchange, exacerbates in Kylo the need to act, to move. Several times he rises to limp in circles around the meager camp. It does little to dispel the sense of growing unease that has grown up inside him. By the time that dusk settles like a thick blanket through the jungle he is half out of his mind. His skin itches and his head rings with every animal call that echoes around them.

In a fit of restlessness Kylo builds a fire out of scraps of understory, igniting it with the heat from his saber. He watches the flames flickering orange and yellow, sending their sparks skyward in lazy spiral.

As usual Rey prepares the food, doling out the bland rations that Kylo has already grown sick of. She is still trying to suppress their link—blocking him out with every bit of determination she possesses—though an occasional though passes her guard every now and again. When she shoves the bowl into his hand he can feel how she avoids both his gaze and the touch of his skin.

She settles herself as far from him as she can while still being within the radius of firelight.

Whatever accord they’d reached in Kaas City has evaporated like the mist that rises from the forest floor. It feels to Kylo as if something is about to happen, though he does not yet know what. His link to the force feel tenuous and watchful. From the way Rey sits, tense and alert he know that she feels the coming disturbance as well.

Kylo tilts his head upward as if he can watch the obscured stars wheeling in their cosmic dance. The smell of smoke is sharp in his nostrils and the damp of the jungle clings to him like sweat. The demon is curled and sleeping inside him. The fire burns low.

He could almost sit like this forever musing on destiny and fate, slowly turning to stone. Another sentinel of the ancient empire—long gone—that once called this planet home.

“I’m going to bed.” Rey’s voice breaks his reverie and he looks to find she has risen up from her place by the fire.

She makes to brush past him, to pass into the shelter. Instinct seizes his brain in its clawss and he catches her by her arm, the bare palm of his hand gripping her arm. Once more is as if a shock passes from skin to skin but this time he does not let go. Warmth spreads across his hand and through his veins. To Kylo it feels as if there is something humming inside him, something radiating from their contact.

Rey goes completely still, the only motion the rise and fall of her chest.

“Rey.” He has said her name few enough times for it to still feel alien on his tongue.

For a split second he can swear he dreamed something like this once. Linked together like children.

Her eyes are wide. Two mirrors they reflect the flicker of the flames. The fear and wonder are written in equal parts on her face. He knows because it’s what he feels also when they touch: the curiosity of a lonely animal who meets one of its own kind after years of solitude.

Rey’s lips are slightly parted as if she might speak.

Then her eyes go cold and he swears he never knew hazel could look so much like steel. With a surprising strength Rey throws him off of her and draws herself up like a queen.

“Rey, don’t.” He says her name again but she does not look back at him.

She throws herself down upon the tarp at the far end of the shelter.

Much later, when the coals of the fire have fade to a dull orange glow he returns himself to the shelter. He lays on tarp careful to maintain his customary distance from her. They are just an arms breadth away but the space between them feels vast, a void of darkness that lingering between the two forms.

Rey is not asleep. Not yet. Her anger, her confusion and her fear spill over and lap against him. The wayward emotions will be her lullaby and his also.

They are the same, alike and dislike in equal measure. But fundamentally still the same. And whatever it was he saw in her eyes in that moment he knows he will never stop chasing it.

 Yes, Kylo is the first to crack.

 

* * *

 

 

But if he cracks then she shatters.

Rey waits until the blackest hours of twilight before slipping from her makeshift bed. Her movement are quiet, quick as a shadow. Beside her Kylo lies silently, the rise and fall of his breathing steady with sleep.

Her saber is a comfort in her hand. It steadies her movements, lending a sense of justification to what she’s about to do. Quietly she creeps toward where he lies and peers down at him. His features look so much lighter in sleep, even the scar she’d once dealt him does not appear so jarring.

 It feels wrong to do it like this. He will not even be able to defend himself.

_He said himself that even if the galaxy was between us he could still find me._ Rey hardens her heart and tightens her grip. She remembers Han Solo’s face as his only son had burned a hole through him. Thinks of the countless other’s he put to death in the name of the First Order. She tells herself its justice.

But there’s something else there too. The way her skin had tingled when he’d touched her, the way he looks at her, the words _‘there’s no one else like us’_ , these things frighten and exhilarate her in equal measure. It’s as if Kylo calls on something deep inside her, something that resides where she is connected to the force. Nor does he guard his own mind as well as he might believe. She can feel him watching her always, feel his own confused want. She fears what will happen if they remain linked as they are.

_He’s too dangerous to let live._

Rey presses the cold hilt against the planes of his abdomen, angled just so. Her hands hardly shake at all. All she needs to do is ignite it and the saber will burn a clean whole through his heart. Rey tightens her grip. Her heart is a drum in her chest.

“Do it.” Dark as pools of jet, his eyes slide open. Kylo Ren lays there motionless gaze fixed on her. Rey’s arm feels frozen but this time she’s sure it’s not of his doing. One of his hands comes up to grip her arm, causing the saber to dig into the fabric of his shirt. “ _Do_ it.”

 “If I let you live you’ll never stop hunting me.”

 “Yes, no matter where you run I’ll still find you.” He agrees and his voice rasps slightly across the words. “So then what are you waiting for?”

It happens in a flash. Rey’s not even sure how. One moment she looms over him, saber hilt pressed to his chest the next the weapon is rolling across the tarp and he has her pinned beneath him. His hands hold her wrist firmly against the ground. _Kriff he’s strong._

“You and I, we are the same, Rey.”

She raises her chin. “I’m nothing like you.”

Their noses are only a finger’s breadth apart. She see the dilation of his pupils, feel how hard his heart is beating above her. More than anything she can feel his desire, spilling over their force bond, overwhelming even the strongest of her barriers.

“You’re a terrible liar.”

Her own mind betrays her and she cannot deny it.

It wrong, utterly and completely. But whatever will she’d used to fight it for so long has abandoned her. Their minds crash together with such a violence that it fills Rey’s ears with white noise. She feels his emotions just as acutely as her own and the strength of them drowns her. His anger, his fear, his loneliness, but most of all his hunger.

 In that moment of distraction Kylo’s mouth finds hers, coming down with a bruising force. One of his hands leaves her wrist to grip at her waist and her now free hand finds itself knotted in his dark curls.

They’re both filthy. She can taste the sweat and dirt on him and she’s sure she’s the same, if not worse. She finds she hardly cares.

Kylo releases her momentarily and loops his finger beneath the hem of her shirt and pulls it off in one violent motion. Cool air tickles her skin, raising gooseflesh where it touches. Rey has never been shy with her body, little things like nakedness never seemed of great importance on Jakku. But now she finds it disconcerting.

He appraises her silently. There is little use for words between them now.

“Now you.” She means for him to undress as well, to strip away all the black fabric. He shakes his head and presses his lips to her neck. And perhaps it is better like that. If she cannot see him fully then she can pretend that he is still a monster when the morning comes. But with her mind thrown open Rey finds she cannot even lie to herself.

Kylo’s lips find her neck and Rey gasps leaves a trail of teeth down her throat, across her collarbone, and then downward. His fingertips dig into her skin with the fervor of someone who has been long starved of physical contact. In that Rey supposes they are not much different. Either way she will have bruises in the morning

Through the openness of their minds she know he likes her like this, beneath him, subservient. Defiance surges in her and she bites into his shoulder, sinking her teeth into the fabric and the flesh. Kylo hisses through his teeth. This time it’s her turn. “What are you waiting for?”

She must look feral look but if Kylo cares then it does not show. Indeed he looks half wild himself.

It’s ungraceful, inelegant, and hardly gentle. Those are not words she would associate with him in any case and especially not now.  Kylo tears away the last barrier of fabric that separate them. He is so tall that she feels he engulfs her completely in his shadow. She finds it doesn’t hurt nearly as much as she’d anticipated.

The wild adrenaline that burns in Rey soon erases any pain she might have felt and she drags her hands down his back with enough strength that she can feel blood welling in the lines that her nails have traced.

A moan bubbles up in his throat and Rey has never felt so alive.

Whatever this is it’s not normal attraction. Even with so many years spent in relative isolation on Jakku Rey know that. This hunger that curls from her stomach and scorches her veins could never be natural. It is insatiable, animalistic, and instinctual. In this world they’ve built between them there’s no room for moderation. They take and take.

She comes first, her back arching against the tarp lined ground. Moments later Kylo lets out an exclamation that Rey only half hears through her daze. She thinks it might be her name.

He rolls off her and she pulls her discarded clothing back to cover herself as best she can. He does not say anything. There is not anything to say.

_He will still be my enemy tomorrow._ She reminds herself, to which another, perhaps more reasonable part of her mind responds _, He’s still your enemy tonight._

They lie on the tarp floor of their little shelter, side by side but not touching. Quiet stretches between them but it is no longer so tense. Sweat from their bodies evaporates and hangs like fog for a few moments in the jungle air before dispersing. The rise and fall of their chests subsides, returning to a normal tempo. Far above the tree tops and misty atmosphere the pin prick stars of the galaxy wheel in their eternal circuits.

Laying so perfectly still in the aftermath Rey can half imagine she feels something in the force stir.

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I know that this chapter took quite a bit longer. Two reasons (a) University and back to dealing with a regular study load and (b) I had a really hard time feeling satisfied with what I'd written. Either way I'll be continuing with chapters but especially because of my studies we'll just have to see how it goes as far as time in between chapters.  
> In any case I hope that the chapter was enjoyed! Not going to lie I was a bit nervous to post it. But I'd still love any feedback! See you next time!


	5. Upon the Maw's Edge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maw (n.) the jaws or throat of a voracious animal; the symbolic or theoretical center of an all consuming hunger

All her life Rey has thought she understood hunger. On Jakku it had been a part of her every day existence, as natural as the sun, or the sky, or the sand. Hunger had been her first true teacher, taught her to fight, taught her to be strong.

But this hunger she does not understand. It claws at the inside of her stomach, and grips her brain with invisible fingers. It drives the reason from her mind and sets her disregard all common sense. Like an addict she will chase the high of power.

It is why, when she is awoken by rough hands in the grey light of morning she does not resist. Instead she rises to meet Kylo with teeth and nails. This time it is her who has him, his back whose is pressed against the tarp. It’s her who has the power.

After she pulls her knees up to her chest and watches Kylo’s form as he slips back into sleep. The chill of the early morning air is a pleasant whisper against the fever of her skin. Even unconscious she can feel the call of him. It’s ever present. Blood to blood, fire to fire, like to like.

Wanting him like this, she knows, will make her weak.

So while he sleeps she slips from the tarp beside him, and she works. The fevered pace of her fingers transforming the remains of the freighter’s transmitter. It’s the key to her escape, the only chance she will get. Rey means to send a message to the resistance somehow, to contact Finn or Poe or General Organa. The transmitter is heavily damaged but not as ruined as she once thought. With enough work it could possible send one last message. But the work is slow, too slow.

Rey is acutely aware that she is running out of time. Each day she spends on Dromund Kaas is another day that the First Order could descend. If they arrive before she can get a message to the Resistance, well, she doesn’t fancy her odds.

She knows Kylo thinks things will be different now. His delusions are painted in great swaths across his mind. He envisions a future where she will come willingly, abandoning every cause she holds in her heart. Rey knows otherwise. The connection forged between them may make her weak in time, but her resolve is strong. Things cannot, will not, be changed. Their choices cannot be undone. Whatever this connect is, this weakness that makes her want him, she means to end it the moment she can.

               

* * *

  

It is late in the day when a quiet noise disturbs Rey from her reverie. Kylo has gone to gather more wood for their fire and she is alone in their camp. Her hand flies to her waist before she realizes the sound is coming from the transmitter.

The device has lit up with a wonderful beep beep beep, a steady signal. Rey could almost sob from relief.  With fumbling fingers she programs in her own message It’s not a Resistance code—those have not doubt been changed since she was last on D’Qar—just a general distress call with her name repeated over and over. It’s a clear enough message to anyone who may be listening. She hopes that the Resistance will receive it first, that they are still looking for her.

It’s begun raining again. Thick drops spill from the leafy canopy above and splash against Rey’s upturned face. Once she’s found the rain marvelous. Now she is cold, tired and hungry.

Rey wants to go home, wherever home is.

Kylo returns soon after and Rey is forced to kill the signal and plunge the transmitter back into a state of dysfunctionality. He throws a pile of timber down at his feet and squats down across from her.

Still when Kylo gives her a questioning look, no doubt sensing her excitement from across their link, she shakes her head. Whatever happens Kylo cannot suspect what she has done. The signal was not active for long but she is certain that it was enough. Tonight, it will have to be tonight.

His look is surely but he accepts her silence evenly enough.

Rising she sets about making the food for their evening meal, her final meal on Dromund Kaas. As she works she tries to tamp down the anticipation that curls inside her like a spring ready to be sprung. Apart from firewood she finds that Kylo has also brought back a large lizard. He skins it with a scrap of sharp metal and offers it to her like some sort of grotesque gift. But after days of only portion gruel it really is more than she could have ever asked for.

Rey adds it to their portions and cooks the whole thing over the fire, turning what would have been a bland meal into a stew of sorts. It’s unseasoned—she doesn’t trust any of the plants on Dromund Kaas—but far better than they’ve had in their time here.

She squats down by the fire as it warms and tries to suppress the rumbles emanating from her stomach.

Kylo watches her as always. The disquiet that his eyes usually draw out of her is replaced with a kind of base thrill. It clenches inside her and draws out the hunger. _Weak. Weak. Weak._ Her mind reminds her.

Through their bonds she knows he is ruminating on something, the angle of his thoughts during downwards as they always do when he grapples with memory. They pitch toward his family, or what’s left of it. A word tickles at the edge of her mind, something she had heard Han Solo say when he’d stood upon the bridge facing his executioner.

“ _Ben.”_ The name is alien in association with its subject.

She looks up to find that he has startled and she has spoken aloud. “Don’t call me that.” There is a curl of menace in his voice that she realizes she has not heard since their first day on Dromund Kaas.

His words draw on the part of her that seeks confrontation. “Why not? It is your name isn’t it?”

“Not anymore.” He looks away and his face is painted with shadows and flickering firelight. His eyes are such a dark brown that they’re truly only black. “I killed Ben Solo years ago. He’s gone now.”

Rey will accept that. It’s easier that way. His mother may think that deep down he still harbors some piece of his former identity but Rey has a hard time believing it. She’s only ever known him as Kylo Ren.

She doesn’t press him any further, instead letting the conversation, if you could truly call it that, die away. The look on his face tells her that the subject is not open to discussion. Still she finds it horribly sad, a waste of his ambition and potential. The waste of a family who loved him and whom he threw away in the blind pursuit of a future.

Rey does not pretend to understand him, but she thinks she does pity him and it may be the closest she ever gets.

          

* * *

     

Rey speaks little to him after that, cleaning up the remains of their meal without meeting his eyes. Kylo tries not to think about the way his old name had sounded in her mouth. She had spoken with such reverence, and sadness also. For him it calls back too many memories, those of the little boy who was afraid of the shadows, and of the same little boy who had turned to them and called them master.

He prefers his new name, and he thinks, in a way she does as well though for different reasons. For him it is a matter of identity, identity and distance from the expectations heaped upon him. For her it is just another distance to place between them. She is happy to make him the villain of their story, for now at least, until she realizes that they are just the same. She’s already begun to.

He knows that Rey feels she has betrayed herself. In a sense he has betrayed himself as well.

Surely this was not the Supreme Leader’s intent in sending him here. To kill her would have been more acceptable then what he has done. Still he reasons that it is not betrayal if it was meant to happen all along, if the force guided them.

Rey’s hair is down this evening, tucked carelessly back behind her ears. It falls around her shoulders like a million strands of brass. He watches it in the fire light. It is a shame almost, to turn her away from the light in which she thrives.

Soon enough the hunger in him flares again, the desire to possess. He catches Rey up against one of the trees that encircles their encampment. Kylo can feel her body ease as he sucks a mark across her clavicle.

She is lithe and small and so alive that he can hardly bear it.

Her lips whisper against his jaw, the promise of a kiss never delivered. With a half-smile she grinds her palm against him and he can’t stop the groan from slipping past his lips. Kylo wonders if Rey learns so quickly in everything she does.

But he’s never been one for playing games and soon he has her back against the bark. Her legs wrap around his waist. His fingertips knot in the tangle that is her hair. If he holds on tight enough then perhaps he can hold them in this moment.

He is not gentle with her, nor she with him. The fire inside them is matched, driving them to bruise, to bite, and to take every last bit of surrender from the other. It’s better that way. Emotions are messy and neither of them have the time.

When they are finished and the hunger is sated Rey smooths down her clothes and extricates herself from the tangle of his limbs. She looks back at him from the edge of the fire, the flickering light catching in the hazel of her eyes.

Kylo wonders if he can truly blame the force bond for wanting heras he does, or if instead the fault lies somewhere within himself.

Rey’s words are so soft he almost misses them. “Do you know the problem with wanting, Kylo?” Her eyes shine like gold and her lips part in the most delicate of smiles.

“No, tell me.”

“It makes us weak.”

 

* * *

 

 

Rey waits until almost daybreak, when the dark is just beginning to yield to the first tendrils of light. Kylo’s arm is a heavy weight across her waist. Like he’s trying to cage her in. Carefully she wriggles free of him, letting his hand fall gently to the tarp.

He stirs. Eyes flicker open, dazed with the cloudy confusion of sleep.

“Where are you going?”

She keeps her voice soft without a waiver of fear. “Women’s business. _Go back to sleep_.” The last words she imbues with what power of the force she can. Master Luke once told her that mind tricks only worked on the very weak willed. Kylo’s mind is far from weak and the only other practice she’s had was on Stormtroopers. Still in his muddled state her words seem to do the trick, his eyes sliding closed once more.

Hastily she stands and gather’s her few possessions: the sabers (both Luke’s and the Sith artifact), the holocron, and her transmitter. The portions and water bucket she leaves. Whatever happens today she will not be spending another night on Dromund Kaas. Beside Kylo might still need them when she’s gone.

Before she does once more to the shelter and kneels down beside him, one hand hovering centimeters from the skin of his scarred cheek.

With blunt force Rey pries her way into Kylo’s mind, searching for anything useful. There is too much. Coordinates, battle plans, training, they all seek to overwhelm her and pull her under the dark tide of his mind. She doesn’t have enough time to absorb it all so she tries to focus on the useful bits, lightsaber forms, manipulations of the force, the names of the spies the First Order has stationed throughout the Resistance’s ranks. Finally her mind brushes against the thing she was not looking for but to which she was inadvertently drawn. His vision from the catacombs of Dromund Kaas stretched before her. She can see the cavern, her own face, so pale in the darkness. Eyes glitter like gold.

Gasping she withdraws. Kylo still sleeps fitfully beneath her. The future she has seen in his mind—the future he clings to—is twisted and warped, an inversion of the truth. It is something only he could believe so completely.

Rising Rey turns her back on him. _Goodbye Kylo Ren._ She shoulder’s her pack and disappears into the shadows of the trees.

  

* * *

 

 

_Goodbye Kylo Ren._

Kylo awakes in the grey hours of the morning—the last traces of sleep still clinging to his mind—to find that Rey is gone. The blankets are still warm but there is no trace of her beside him. He reaches out to her mind he finds it is blocked. He tears from the makeshift bed, the blood pounding in his ears.

“Rey!” There comes no response. But why would there be? After all isn’t she running from him?

All sign of her is gone from the camp including his grandfather’s lightsaber. Far above the treetops the hum of engines shatters the quiet. The First Order has arrived, or else it is the Resistance. Either way the time has come for action.

_You are weak. She said it herself._ The realization explodes through his mind like a cannon. In all his foolishness he had let his desires blind him, let himself trust her. She had waited, and when the time came she’d used his weaknesses against him.

Howling he races through the trees. Rey will be faster than him with his injured leg but his rage pushes him forward. She has left a clear path for him to follow, the imprints of her boots leading back towards the ruined city of the Sith. Perhaps she thinks the dead will shelter her there, among the bones and the rot.

 He cries out her name once more, throwing his mind about himself in an attempt to find any trace of her. Only the jungle answers. The place where she should be is a void. The thoughts, like stars that once dotted the space in between them have been blown out.

The very core of him is shaken by her betrayal. He’d meant to save her from the delusions of the light, meant to let her share in the power that ran between them. But the Supreme Leader had been right about the light side after all. Its users were selfish and devious. And _she_ is no different.

Kylo presses his legs to move faster, underbrush tearing at him as he runs. Whatever happen he cannot allow her to escape. If she does then not only with he have failed in his mission but he will have lost the future.

 

* * *

 

 

Rey races through the underbrush, following the path back to Kaas City. She knows that if that Resistance is here then they will have discovered the landmark. And if they have not then she can hide among the ruins and catacombs where the First Order may be less likely to go.

Her feet churn up mulch and mud in her wake. Anyone with eyes will be able to mark her trail but there’s no time for secrecy. Already she can hear the murmur of engines above, too large and numerous to be Resistance. Leaves and branches slap at her skin as she runs, leaving angry scratches down her arms and legs.

 In a burst of speed she rounds a corner and almost runs straight into two Stormtroopers. She skids to a stop but too late.

“You there!”

She does not have time to think. The blade of her saber glows blue in her hand and the troopers fall away like puppets whose strings are suddenly severed. Rey looks down on the prone white forms and lump rises to her throat. She thinks of Finn. _A Jedi’s first defense should never be violence._

A cry echoes through the jungle. The voice is familiar.

Tearing her eyes away from the bodies of the Stormtroopers Rey surges onward.

She arrives at Kaas City just as the sun is rising over Dromund Kaas’ forested hills. The light paints the decrepid monoliths in swaths of pink and purple. Glass from the broken dome of the citadel glitters and shines with the hue of a thousand rainbows. It is breathtakingly beautiful in its desolation.

Rey picks a building at random, tall, flat topped and begins to climb. The stones are slick and mossy beneath her hands.

“REY!"

She nearly loses her grip on the slimy stones of a ledge. Far below the dark form of Kylo stands, staring up at her.

Arms shaking from the effort and feet scrambling for purchase she begins to climb faster. She does not need to look back to know that he ascends after her. She just hopes the injuring to his leg will slow him enough.

Panting and covered in sweat Rey rolls onto the roof of the building. For a few moments she can only lay on her back and gasp at the air. The rooftop is empty but for a few vines that have pushed their way through the stones. But from here she will be plainly visible to any would be rescuers.

Rey scrambles to her feet just at Kylo vaults over the edge of the roof, tinges of the force lending impossible strength to his motions. His saber flashes red and he bears down on her in a shower of sparks. 

 “It doesn’t have to be like this! Come with me!” His words ring inside her brain, echoes of desperation. It’s an offer they both know she cannot and will not accept.

 Anger rises up like bile in her throat. “You think I would go back with you? Dress myself in black and sit at your side? You’re _mad_.” She continues to edge backward. He strikes at her with heavy blows. Rey brings her saber up to meet his in a crackle of electricity. Her arms tremble.

“You are mine! We belong to eachother!”

“I will never be yours _Ben Solo_.” The words escape as a hiss.

The blades bathe them both in florid red.  They are so close together that Rey can feel the heat that is given off. She remembers the last time they had stood like this. Only this time there is no secret reserve of the force for her to call upon. She is completely on her own. Above her his eyes shine with betrayal as he rains down blows upon her. She can feel the vortex of emotions pouring off of him as well, his anger becoming hers. Rey’s arms feel too slow to keep up with such ferocity.

Neither of them are in their prime, half-starved and exhausted. Without the energy to maneuver and confined to the space of the rooftop Rey find that she has the disadvantage. Kylo’s strength is greater than hers and without the ability to evade he can bear down on her with all of his strength.

The hilt of his saber connects squarely with her chest and she goes flying, thudding into the ruins of a low wall. Her own weapon sails from her hand to skitter uselessly across the roof.

“Give up!”

She shakes her head, too winded to speak.

“Fine.” He raises his blade once more. Every never in Rey’s body screams at her to move. She ducks, but slow, too slow. His blade skids past hers in a shower of sparks. However, in her preoccupation with the blade she forgets the vents entirely. One goes sailing past the right side of her face, too close, it cuts a streak down one side. She can hear her flesh cauterizing before she registers the pain.

Her vision blurs and the side of her face goes cold then hot. She presses a hand to the side of her face instinctually and is nearly sick at the feeling of the skin beneath her fingers.

“That was a warning. Next time I’ll take your hand.” With her remaining good eye she can see that his face is twisted with rage. A sneer pulls at the corner of his mouth as he speaks.

A sudden wind fans Rey’s face and the whine of engines fills her ears. Through the thick clouds and X-wing alights on the rooftop.

“BEN!” The word reverberates through the still air.

The butt of his saber connects with the side of Rey’s head. It’s not enough to knock her out but her vision swims and she stumbles to the ground, dazed. Above her Kylo whirls around. Vaguely she sees the figure of Luke Skywalker standing on the roofline. Behind him, less distinct, comes another more shadowy figure.

Kylo turns to face his uncle. “Skywalker, after all this time you show yourself.”

 “You need to let her go Ben.”

 “This doesn’t concern you!” Kylo’s voice is mad, unhinged and unpredictable next to Luke’s steady one.

“Let her go! The darkness is not for her!” Rey’s discarded saber shines in Luke’s hand.

Dazedly Rey feels strong arms seize her around the middle. For a moment she fights then she hears the voice of Poe Dameron in her ear, “Up you get.”

With snarl Kylo strides forward and Rey’s discarded saber shines bright in Luke’s hand. Luke moves much quicker than Rey believed a man of his age could. Still it is apparent who is stronger.

Rey allows Poe to steer her towards the X-wing. Rey’s vision in blurry, her head aching. The side of her face still smarts where Kylo had cut her. Once she nearly falls and after that Poe loops an arm under her, half carrying half guiding. BB-8 chirps excitedly as they approach.

With a heft of his arms—Rey is embarrassed that she’s not helping very much—Poe half lifts Rey into the fighter. He hesitates, looking back. In her confusion Rey can just make out the shafts of red and blue light glancing off each other in dazzling conflagrations. Somehow she finds it oddly beautiful.

Ships are flying overhead, too large to be resistance, swarming towards the rooftop like insects.

Through the fog of her mind Rey hears Luke’s voice, shouting. “Get her out of here Dameron. This is between my nephew and I.”

And then Kylo’s voice. “Don’t run from me Rey! If you run I’ll find you!”

The rumble of engines is the last thing Rey hears before they are soaring skyward. Next to her Poe is saying something but Rey doesn’t know what.

He gives her a concerned look and Rey finds she is crying.

 

* * *

 

 

Kylo watches the X-wing surge skyward, racing between the clouds. Somewhere not far away he hears the shouts of First Order rescue teams, their ships converging on the rooftop.

He turns back to Luke Skywalker. In the sky above the X-wing is gone and so it she.

“This is your fault.” The saber in his hand crackles. “You should not have interfered.”

His uncle’s face had always been too placid for Kylo’s taste, his voice too calm and assured. “No nephew, the fault is yours.”

There are tears in the old eyes. That wrinkled face dredges up so many memories of childhood, of following his uncle around asking again and again to hear the story of the rebellion. _Did you really blow up the death star?_ He’d always ask.

 Luke’s voice is soft. “Come back Ben, come back to the light and to those who still love you. I can feel it inside you. Set it free.”

_Gone. Gone. Gone._

A strangled howl erupts from Kylo’s throat and the Force tears from him in a sudden maelstrom, a blast of fire and rage that cannot be contained nor withstood. His uncle crumples in a heap of old robes, the saber rolling away extinguished.  Kylo Ren burns. He burn until, starved for oxygen the fire in him can only extinguish itself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Much speedier update this time, no? Also I feel guilty about Luke but I also realized a long time ago that it was necessary for the trajectory of this story to continue on. Additionally some of you may recognize the "wanting makes us weak" line from Leigh Bardugo's Grisha trilogy. I felt it fit the dynamic of Reylo very well and so I adapted it into the dialogue, however, I would still like to give credit where credit is due.  
> Also feel free to check out my [Star Wars Tumblr](http://abadfeelingaboutthis.tumblr.com/) I often post things about this story there.


	6. Whelve Away the Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whelve (v.) To bury something deep; to hide

  1. 23\. 24.



 Rey lays on her back in the resistance medical bay and lazily counts ceiling tile with her unsteady eyes.

  1. 26.



Her limbs itch for motion but the doctors have told her she should try to limit her movements on account of her injuries. Concussions, she’d earned the first in the landing and the second from _him_. They tell her she needs to rest, that sleeping will help her regain her strength.

Rey ignores them.

No matter how hard she tries she cannot bring herself to sleep. Each time she closes her eyes she sees _him_ , hears the crackle of his saber as it had burned across her skin, feels his fingertips crawling across her skin. His voice whispers in her ears. _There is no one else like us in the entire galaxy, we belong together._ She wakes tangled in her sheets with a cry building in her throat. Her skin burns feverishly. Rey’s not even sure which is worse, the dreams where he is killing her or those of their time in their little camp.

No, sleep brings her no rest. Counting is easier, safer.

Finn visits her often, bringing odd flowers and gifts to draw out her now-rare smiles. He sits beside her bed for hours regaling her with everything that’s happened since she’s been away. Poe is teaching him how to pilot, he informs her, though he doubts he’ll ever be any good at it.

Rey finds it disorienting to see him sitting beside her so whole and healthy. The last time she’d seen him their positions had been very much reversed.

“I woke up just a few days after you left.” He tells her one day, fiddling with the stem of an unusual looking red flower. “At first I didn’t believe them when they said you’d left.”

She apologizes profusely but he brushes it away.

“I’m just glad to see you in one piece. When they found your ship in dead space, well I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. It was like you just vanished. No one knew what to think, not even General Organa.”

Finn is very tactful about not asking too many questions. Mostly he waits for Rey to reveal what she’s willing to about her time on Dromund Kaas. Still she can feel the curiosity and the fear in his gaze as her silence continues. The tone of his voice occasionally takes on a probing cast.

 There are some things she can barely acknowledge to herself, much less to anyone else. Even to General Organa—who demands a full report—she finds herself omitting details. With time the bruises fade and no one asks about them.

On the fourth day the attendant droids bring her a mirror so that she can inspect the damage herself.

She looks at her reflection, the scar that shines angrily down one side of her face, just shy of her eye. _We’re a matched set now_ , she had realized the first time the medical droid had lifted the bandages. Kylo Ren has marked her as she’d once marked him. Perhaps that had been his intent all along. It sends a familiar shiver down her spine, fear and anticipation.    

In the end she spends a full week in medical and the doctors promise she will spend another three confined to a chair

Finn is with her when the results of her final medical exam comes back on the sixth day.

“Vitals normal, no serious internal injuries,” The silver medical droid rattles off her stats, “Severe concussion, expect occasional loss of memory or disorientation, no evidence of pregnancy—“

Finn drops her hand in shock. Rey does not even have the energy to respond to his horrified and questioning look she just averts her eyes back to the medical droid.

“—overall clean bill of health, although you will be expected to report back for a follow-up in a month.”  Rey is too busy imagining how Finn must look at her—like something that is contaminated—to comprehend the words. She does not blame him if he does. She feels dirty too.

 Warm arms envelope her and Rey’s tears sink into the soft grey of Finn’s shirt.

 “Did he hurt you?” Finn’s voice is soft but undercut by a ripple of anger, “I swear if he did—“

Rey shakes her head and buries her face once more. How can she expect Finn to understand what had happened beneath the perpetually grey skies of the jungle planet? She cannot even understand it fully herself.

“Well you’re safe now. He can’t touch you here.”

She nods and wipes the tears from her eyes. There is no way for Kylo Ren to reach her here, at the hearth of the resistance. She is safe from him, well-guarded and protected. _But what if I don’t want to be safe from him?_ Rey pushes the wayward thought away. It is a dangerous way to think.

 

* * *

 

 

_Cold. Kylo’s breath lingers like ice in the air. Water drips from imaginable heights to splash against the floor of the subterranean cavern._

_He knows where he is, it is the same place that has haunted him for years._

_Kylo shifts in his carven chair, the very same he used to kneel before. The stone is unforgiving._

_Far beyond hooded figures have arranged themselves, stooping low in a ghastly mockery of a court. Knights, arrayed in splendor. He is the only one seeted._

_There is a faint rustle of fabric and Kylo turns his head to look at she who stands beside him. Like everything else in the cavern she is swathed in the darkest of cloths. But there are pins in her hair and jewel gleams like firelight at her throat. An ancient saber swings at her waste as she steps closer, mist rising from parted lips._

_Then Rey the scavenger smiles a smile that is all teeth. “There must always be two.”_

_One of her hands finds his and the skin smarts and burns between them. Her voice echoes oddly in the quiet._

_"One to crave power, the other to embody it.”_

Kylo wakes with gooseflesh spread across his body, cold sweat seeping into his sleep clothes. The dream is not a new one. Indeed, it’s always the same. Each night he relives his vision from Dromund Kaas, relives the future that was stolen.

Outside the viewport the stars shine like pinpricks of fire in the impenetrable darkness. He wonders at the standard time, all hours feel alike on the finalizer.

Kylo rises from the tangle of his sheet as his leg creaks beneath him. Panels on the brace flare as the metal takes on his weight. The bones had been crushed and no amount of Bacta solution can heal them together properly. He will limp for the rest of his life. When the medical droid had informed him of this Kylo had crumpled it with a flicker of the force. Still he took the brace over amputation.

Now the leg is heavy as he robes himself. His mask is gone, lost somewhere amid the wreckage and swamps of Dromund Kaas. Without it he feels the constant exposure of passing eyes. He will have it replaced in time. But for now he draws up his hood, so that his scarred features are cloaked in shadow.

But the hallways are quiet. It must be early indeed.

The clack of his boots is uneven on the Finalizer’s polished durasteel floor as he makes his way slowly toward the command center. For what feel likes the first time he has need of General Hux.

A few straggling Stormtroopers pass, shying away from him where their paths cross. Like leaves or a herd of startled bantha they flee from the wrath they are sure he is carrying within him. They have no doubt heard too many stories. Occasionally an officer with nod to him, a voiceless greeting forming on their lips. Kylo ignores them all. What use is there in trivial pleasantries?

Since those scorching days on Dromund Kaas Kylo no longer burns. At first he had been afraid. He feared that without the constant fire and rage his power would subside. But as he had reached out to the force, feeling it flex and move, he knew it was not so. The cold he feels no longer troubles him. The fire that had lived inside him for so long has leached away leaving only purpose.

_Kylo Ren._   The word rips through his mind like a bullet. Kylo doubles over, his hand reaching out to brace himself against the wall. _You cannot hide from me child._ White fingertips claw at his brain, shredding at his thoughts. Images float unbidden before his eyes: Jakku with its too-blue sky, falling, crashing, burning, Rey with her hair falling down her back.

_No!_ Kylo grits his teeth, and with excruciating effort throws the traces of Snoke from his mind.

It is a summons, no mistaking it, and the third in three days. If he had any sense of self-preservation he would heed his master’s call. He would crawl home like a whipped animal to grovel at the base of the ancient throne. His apologies would run out and lap uselessly against the cavern walls. But the pain of _her_ betrayal has made him reckless and his visions make him certain.

Kylo redoubles the walls around his mind.

There is much to do, and very little time. 

 

* * *

 

               

“Our intelligence on Viamarr believes the mining guild has signed a treaty with the First Order.”

“So then we’ve lost the entire system.” General Organa’s voice is disappointed. It’s clear to see that she is in morning from the somber tones of her clothes and the sadness in her eyes. Still she draws herself up like a true princess in front of the officers and her voice is steady. “We should have anticipated it. The Togyra’s and the council have always been notoriously self-serving.”

“This raises the questions of where we are to get supplies…” The resistance higher-ups begin bickering amongst themselves once more.

Rey leans back in her chair, eyes fixed dazedly on the fluorescence of the lights

One of the commanders—a sharp eyes man with a thick moustache—glares at her as if to say _“What is this child doing here? She doesn’t belong.”_

“If we’ve lost Viamarr then maybe we should authorize a strike on the First Order forces in the Gorse system? The mines there would more than compensate—“ At that they’re off again, bickering among themselves like children. Only General Organa remains her composure. Though Rey can see the infinitesimal narrowing of her eyes. Her mouth pitching towards disapproval. The color and shape of those eyes is all too familiar.

_His eyes._

Rey tears her gaze away. Kylo Ren’s face seems to dance in front of hers. Above him the canopy of Dromund Kaas stretches on forever. It’s as if molten lead has settled in her stomach.        

_They’re bad thoughts._ She tells herself. _Distract yourself._ Resignedly she takes up counting the fluorescent panels imbedded in the ceiling.

“What do you think Rey?” It’s General Organa’s voice that brings her careening back to reality.

She stares around at the dozen or so of now upturned faces. Her mouth is very dry. “I’m sorry. I missed the question.”

The mustached commander harrumphs but General Organa doesn’t appear phased. “I asked if you thought we should send a strike team to Cynda, to take possession of the mining operations there.”

Rey murmurs that they should do whatever they think is best and tries not to feel completely incompetent. Soon enough they turn back to their own discussions and leave her to her silence.

The sharp eyed commander is right, she doesn’t belong here, among the officers, generals, and commanders. Rey feels very acutely like a wayward child. Kriff, she can’t even keep up her concentration for a whole meeting. It’s only on General Organa’s instance that she sits in on the meetings to begin with.

“You are a symbol of the resistance now Rey, you need to understand what we’re up against.” She had said.

Still she sees the way they look at her: with dark circles under her eyes, pale skin from time spent in the subterranean base, and lank hair she doesn’t even bother to tie up anymore. Their gazes mirror that of the council members. _This is their best hope?_

It is another hour before the meeting is finally, blissfully over. By that point Rey practically wants to scream.

_“_ Are you sure you’re all right Rey?” General Organa presses one small palm against Rey’s shoulder as the rest of the Resistance Officers file out of the room. _His_ mother. How can she be so kind where he is so cruel?

“I’m fine, just a little tired.” She makes light on it, as if it’s not painfully obvious that she hasn’t been sleeping.

General Organa sighs and nods. She looks tired too, new lines etched into her small face that had not been there when Rey had set out for Achc-to. They are the only reminder that the General is in morning.  Rey doesn’t think she will ever forget the look on the older woman’s face when she and Poe had stepped down onto the landing platform alone.

 “ _Where is my brother?”_

_“I am so sorry.”_ There had been no other words to say then. There were no other words to say now.

Still General Organa carries her grief with a poise and strength that Rey cannot fathom. She is unbroken in a way that Rey for all her effort cannot achieve. Perhaps it is only that she has had so much practice.

The General scrutinizes her. “If you’re sure that’s all. But please if there’s anything you need…”

Rey musters up what she can of a smile. “I’ll let you know.”

On General Organa’s orders Rey’s time on Dromund Kaas is being kept to a strictly need to know basis. Most of higher ups know simply that she was captured, and escaped. But for the majority of the resistance it simply does not exist. No one has been told exactly what occurred in the ruins of Kaas city. Rey is extremely grateful for this. She doesn’t like to talk about her time on the jungle planet to anyone, not even Finn who already knows some and has likely guessed more.

Rey’s heart feels like a stone in her chest, weighed down by her secrets and her lies.

At night she lies awake, huddled under a pile of blankets on the floor of the room they promise her is not a cell, though that is all it will every feel like. She sleeps little, staving of dreams in which he sears her through with his broken blade or else holds her once more with hot breath against her neck. She’s not sure which night phantom terrifies her more.

Instead she spends hours inspecting the holocron she’d retrieved from Kaas City’s vaults. She still has the sith saber too, but sits abandoned in the corner of the closet. She’d lost Luke’s saber and no doubt will need a new one but she for all that she will not touch it.

_I am not like him._

Instead she places the holocron on the duracrete floor and lets its blue light wash over her face. There is something comforting in it though she does not know what. Nor has any amount of inspection yielded the secrets that it surely holds. For now it is nothing more than a night lamp, banishing the terrors of the darkness until the morning.

 

* * *

 

               

“You do not summon me General.” Kylo tells Hux by way of a greeting. There has never been any love lost between them two.

Hux’s well-polished boots click against the floor as he round his desk and sinks into the high backed chair. When he at last looks at Kylo his mouth is curved in the slightest of grins.

“I don’t.” Superiority is etched in every angle of Hux’s face. “It is the Supreme Leader who has summoned you.”

“I am aware.”

“Insubordination Ren?” Hux raises an eyebrow.

“Hardly.”

 “Your orders were to find the scavenger girl, yet I don’t see her anywhere.” Hux frowns lightly though his eyes are all glee. “Should I report to the Supreme Leader that you have failed? Is that why you ignore his calls?”

The mention of Rey is like a shard of glass in his stomach, raw and painful. At night he sees her in black silk with his jewels around her neck, but when he opens his eyes he can only recall the wild obstinate thing that had slipped through his fingers amid the ruins. It is a shame, a tragic waste of potential.

The place she had occupied in his mind lives still but now it has fallen quiet. She is still there, but each time he reaches out to her he finds a fierce resistance. It seems Rey seeks to smother their connection in isolation.

_Wanting makes us weak._ How wrong she would be. He intends to prove it.

Kylo clenches his gloved fist, and Hux drawls on. “And of course you are also aware that each day you ignore his summons you are in active rebellion. Would you be a _coward_ and a _traitor_ Ren?”

“I suppose you’d like nothing more than to see me put away. Wouldn’t you?” The table protests sharply as Kylo leans across it. “I suppose you’ve already drawn up the order for my arrest.” He probes at Hux’s mind with a sharp jab. “Yes I see it, and all you need is the Supreme Leader’s signature. But, don’t waste your time.”

“What do you mean?” Hux’s eyes are narrow slits.

“The First Order has been stagnant too long. It requires new leadership.”

“Careful Ren, what you are suggesting is treason.”

“Perhaps to you, but not to me. The Knights of Ren only follow the strong.”

“And you think you are _so_ strong.” Every syllable of Hux’s words drips with contempt. “You think _the force_ will protect you.”

Kylo longs to reach out to the force, to let it flow through his fingertips, constricting around the soft skin of Hux’s throat. He pushes the impulse aside. There will come a time to educate the General, but for now he needs him.

“I intend to call in my nights by the next rotation.” Kylo does not expect Hux to endorse his plan or to aid in it. The general’s principles would never allow for that. However, Hux is no fool, he can see where his own self interests lie. “I expect that you will not stand in my way.”

Hux regards him for a moment, fingers forming a sharp steeple before his chest. “I will consider your offer.” It is as close to an agreement as he is likely to get. “But Ren, know that I will have my due.” Kylo nods. He has made a deal with a monster and he would expect nothing less. Like a hungry weasel Hux is never to be trusted. Only power necessitates such means.

_Through strength I gain power._

As he turns back down the echoing corridors Kylo pulls at the thread of the force that linger in the air all about him. The cloth of his robes feels to light to keep out the creeping chill. He ignores it. The weight of his saber is familiar at his hip.  Kylo Ren may have grown cold, but he has never felt stronger.

               

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Indeed, after so long I have finally gotten my life together enough to write again, hurra! I know this chapter was rather short and may seem a bit like filler, however, more exciting things are coming in the next chapter and this was necessary to reach it.


	7. Filled Up with Eleutheromania

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eleutheromania (n.) an intense and irresistable desire for freedom

Breath rises in an icy mist and hangs hauntingly in the air. Kylo has always hated this room. Someday soon he will tear it down, burry it with the rest of the forsaken ruins.

Prone figures litter the floor. Many are those faithful to the Supreme Leader—guards and disciples—but many are not. No doubt it had been chaos when the cue had begun. Kylo spies more than one body of knight among them. Fools. It is a fight they could not have hoped to win.

" _So boy, come to face me at last.”_ Upon the great black throne Snoke is perched like an oversized spider. There is no weapon in his hands or among the folds of his robes but Kylo knows his former master has no need to one. Why bother with sabers when you can shred the minds of your enemies without moving a muscle?

“I am not a boy anymore.”

“ _No? You think you are strong enough to be master of the dark side_.”

A mental force like a blast tears at Kylo’s consciousness. Icy fingers pry into the fabric of his thoughts. Unbidden images flash before his eyes: his mother in her nightgown the night she’d sent him away, his father upon the bridge, Rey lying on the tarp on Dromund Kaas. Rey’s face shifts, becoming bathed in red light. The jewels in her hair glimmer.

With inexorable effort Kylo pushes back at the prying tendrils of thought.

“There can only be two.” One to embody the power and the other to crave it.

Snoke laughs, a horrible sound like the cracking of bones. It raises gooseflesh on Kylo’s neck. The mental probe retracts completely. _“And you think_ the girl _will be the second. That she will sit beside you. Yes Kylo Ren I see your intentions_.” He tuts. “ _Her light has corrupted you, you will never be free of it_. _She has made you weak.”_

The words are too close to and it stabs at him as sharply as any blade. _Wanting makes up weak._

“You’re wrong.” He is not sure to whom he speaks, “I am stronger than I have ever been.”

“ _Then let us begin_.”

               

* * *

 

 

It’s as if a stone has been dropped somewhere in the smooth pool of the galaxy. Now its ripples wash over Rey with a coldness that even her inner fire has difficulty staving off. She shivers and suddenly the walls of the tiny room seem to draw in oppressively.

Rey pushes herself from the too-soft mattress and pulls on the plain, and slightly crumpled grey uniform that has become standard among the resistance forces.

Beyond the door the hallway is quiet but Rey is drawn forward by foreboding.

In the strategy room she finds General Organa, Poe, and a few other higher-ups huddled together around a holopad.

Poe glances round as Rey nears the door. “Where’s Finn?”

“What?”

“I sent him to get you.”

General Organa looks up from the display. As always she’s dress immaculately but there are shadows under her eyes that tell Rey that she was not the only one woken unexpectedly.

“She probably felt it,” Her voice is shaken. “like I did.”

Rey’s heart plummets to the bottom of her stomach. “I felt a disturbance. What happened?”

“Snoke is dead. My so—Kylo Ren has killed him.”

Rey blinks, trying to absorb the words. She tries to conjure up images of the leader of the First Order as she had seen them in Kylo’s mind: a great white husk of a creature who plucked at the threads of the force like a spider. It’s a enough to make her shudder.

“They have yet to declare a new leader, no doubt the infighting will already have begun.” Poe is gesturing at the hologram, now displaying a map of an unfamiliar system. “Now is the time to strike, while they are divided.”

Poe, brilliant, tactical Poe. He’s right of course. It will be Hux against Kylo.  _Let them destroy each other._

“You think that wise Captain? Won’t they expect an attack at a time like this?” Another commander chimes in.

“Captain Dameron is right.” General Organa presses her hands together. “They have no way of knowing that we know of Snoke’s death. If we can strike now then we will catch them at unawares.”

“Where?”

The display zooms until a single moon revolves before their eyes. “Cynda. Not only does it have extensive mining resources but our intelligence tells us the First Order has a base there. Captain Dameron how soon can you have a command together.”

“Fifteen minutes maybe.”

“Good. Commander Kato inform the docking bay to get the X-wing’s prepped.”

Suddenly everyone is moving. Rey finds herself crowded up against the wall until the room has cleared.

Only General Organa remains. She leans against the holo-display head bowed as if in prayer.

 _“I never thought…Luke was right.”_ She mutters and Rey wonder’s if she knows that she is still here.

Cautiously she edges toward the door but the General’s head whips around. “Rey.” Her eyes seem to soften slightly. “You look tired. Get some rest, we can talk more in the morning.”

 “Shouldn’t I go with Poe? I could be useful.”

 “You’re too valuable to risk losing. We need you here.”

Anger stabs through Rey like a blade. _What use is she here? Withering away behind the duracrete walls?_ Rey inhales deeply. Luke would have told her to breath after all.

General Organ’s voice is quieter when she next speaks. “Rey, when you were on Dromund Kaas, did he ever….do you think there is any chance for him? For Ben?”

Rey thinks of Kylo Ren, of his loneliness and his anger. She’d looked into his mind and seen the throne—it truly was his throne now—and her place beside it. She had felt his longing.

 “Ben was destroyed a long time ago.”

              

* * *

                

There is blood on Kylo Ren’s hands. Blood on his hands, blood on his boots, and pooled all round his feet. It falls from the tattered cloth of his robes with a gentle plink plink plink.

Beside him the medical droid probes at the damaged flesh of his arm. Kylo grits his teeth as the droid ministers to the places where Snoke had struck him with the force.

Upon the cavern floor beneath the throne four knights stand. They watch the droid’s ministrations with an interest that they cannot hide from their thoughts. Kylo is thankful for his helm, that they will not be able to see the weakness in his face. The Knights of Ren only follow the strong.

“What news?”

“Supreme Leader.” The word hangs heavily in the air as they kneel.  “We have secured the Empire’s databases.”

“Very good. Jakan Ren, you will transport them to my sanctum.”

“And if the First Order interferes?”

“Then you will silence them.” The knight bows his head a retreats leaving his compatriots standing before the dias. They shift in the dim lighting like shadows.

“Zarya send out transcriptions that all those who are faithful are to reconvene at our facilities on Moraband.”

“You intend to abandon Ziost?”

The cold of the hall seems to have infused Kylo’s very heart. It bites at him and numbs his movements. It is not a place fit for any living creature. “This planet is dead. It died with Supreme Leader Snoke.”

The shortest of the knights bows her masked and hooded head in acceptance. The spear staff at her side gleams with an unholy light.

“Now all of you _out._ ” The last word thrumbs with power and perhaps it is this that sends even the bold Zarya Ren skittering from the room.

Beside him the silver medical droid hums discontentedly. ”Sir there appears to be a small problem.”

“What?”

 “Sir, the corruption has set into the bone. If we do not amputate it is likely it will continue to spread.”

 “Then do it.” He tries to focus his thoughts away from this room as the droid’s saw hums to life. He thinks of Rey. The light in her, it is his drug and he knows, and he will never stop craving for it.

Perhaps Snoke had been right at the end of all things.

Kylo Ren is Supreme Leader now but he has never been more alone.

  

* * *

 

               

Halfway back to her room she encounters Finn. He is dress and kitted out, a blaster hangs heavily at his belt.

“Rey!” He hails Rey before embracing her in a warm hug. “Come to wish me luck?”

“You’re going?”

He shrugs, “They let Poe put his own command together. Thought it was time I get off this blasted base.”

Worry and something suspiciously akin to jealously flood her in equal measure. “Are you sure you’ll be alright? Your spine—“

“Don’t worry, it won’t be much of a fight anyway. First Order doesn’t even know we’re coming.” His smile is enough to melt the apprehension in her chest.

“Give them hell for me then.” She grins, “I wish Organa would let me go with you.”

“Next time.”

“Finn come on!” Poe sprints past, his orange flight uniform still rumpled, helmet under his arm. BB-8 whirs past behind him.

“That’s my queue.”

“Good luck!” Rey calls after them. Her eyes track them down the hallway that leads to the hanger.  Poe knows what he’s doing. He’ll keep Finn out of trouble.

With feet like lead Rey traipses back to her room. She knows that the news of Snoke’s death should come as a relief to. He was their biggest foe, the mastermind of the First Order and the Knights of Ren. Without him they will be crippled. Yet her heart beats erratically in her chest and her mouth tastes like metal.

The heavy door swings shut with a clang and exhaustion washes over her like the waves that would sometimes crash against the cliffs on Ach-To. Rey can no longer resist it. The fingertips seem to brush against her even as she lays her head down on the too-soft mattress. She closes her eyes and Kylo Ren is waiting for her.

 

* * *

 

                               

“Well, well. I’m impressed Ren.” The clack of Hux’s boots rings in the dark hall.

Kylo peers down at him, admiring how small the General looks from the top of Snoke’s dais. He sees the way Hux’s nose wrinkles as he passes the huddled corpses. The former Supreme Leader lies among them, slumped at the foot of the throne like a withered shell. One of Hux’s boots nudges the body as he advances.

“Have you come to pledge your loyalty General?” The mechanical sound of his own voice is magnified by the emptiness. Upon the arm of the chair his new hand gleams with the sheen of new steel.

Hux’s lips curl in distain. “I do not bow to you Ren.”

“I am the Supreme Leader.”

“Not to me, nor to those I speak for.”

“Tell me then, why I shouldn’t destroy you here and now.”

“You require the support of the fleet and of my Stormtroopers. Without them your band of fanatics will be easily crushed.”

Kylo’s bad leg creeks as he rises. He descends the steps of dais with uneven footfalls that nonetheless cause echoes to run out and across the cold stone.

“Are you threatening me General?” Kylo can feel how Hux’s pulse quickens and how his thoughts darken. They dwell on power and providence, the right to rule. He would like nothing better than to give the order to attack, to see his troopers storm this room and topple Kylo from his former master’s throne. But the saber at Kylo’s belt keeps him at bay.

“I am offering you the opportunity to renew our alliance. The First Order and the Knights of Ren have cooperated for many years.”

“I do not have to form an alliance with you General. You owe me your allegiance as Supreme Leader.” Traces of the force itch at Kylo’s fingertips, the power to silence the conniving self-seeking man before him. He clenches his fist, feeling the mechanics of his new hand come to life.

Hux smirks. “The times have changed Ren.”

Anger surges through Kylo like a rush of white hot fire. His sabre arcs high cleaving the air in front of General Hux with the crackle of ozone. Kylo slashes downward and the prone head of Snoke falls away from the body. It rolls across the floor to settle, staring upwards with empty eyes. Hux steps backwards ever so slightly.

“I have terms.” Comes the growl from behind his voice modifier.

Hux nods as if this is expected but Kylo can see the smugness settle into his eyes and feel the satisfaction that radiates from him like a halo.

“The First Order will not interfere with any business of the Knights of Ren. Furthermore you will not act without my knowledge. I expect you to seek my council before taking any military actions.” The saber crackles still in his hand. “Finally, I want the scavenger girl.”

“She is a traitor to the First Order and will stand trial as such.”

“These are my terms. When we seize the resistance base on D’Qar she must be brought to me, _alive_.”

Hux’s eyes narrow. “D’Qar?”

“That is where you intend to strike, is it not?” Kylo wonders if Hux knows he smiles behind the blank inhuman plane of his mask. “You would do better to guard your thoughts. However, I agree. The base must be annihilated.” Somewhere deep inside him twinges at the thought of the destruction, of his mother who would surely perish in the flames of their assault. 

“Very well.”

Kylo brushes outwards with his mind, past himself and the general to the pure pulsing fabric of the force. Since the Snoke’s it has shifted, the space he had once occupied now dark and silent as the space between star systems. Only those strong with the force would recognize it.

“The Resistance will try to take advantage of Supreme Leader Snoke’s death.” Both his mother and Rey would have felt the disturbance. “We must know where they will strike.”

“I will have our informants contacted. We will know within hours.” Hux smooths the front of his uniform smugly.

“There is no need.”

Kylo closes his eyes and reaches out, fingertips curling across the void that lingers between them. She is there, bright and alive as a flame. In her sleeping state he brushes past her defenses as if it is the easiest thing in the world. He sees the face of the pilot, and of the traitor too. Their words ring across the gap between them. In the quiet Kylo engulfs her and whispers softly in her ear.

_Thank you Rey._

“They will strike Cynda.”

 

* * *

 

 

 

 As always Rey dreams of Kylo Ren. But its not the usual dream.

_She’s sitting at a table, on some sort of porch. Thin screens keep out the thick jungle beyond. For a moment she wonders if this is Kaas city again, but there are thick beams of sunlight streaming through the foliage. Dromund Kaas had been perpetually dark._

_A boy she does not know sits at the table beside her. His hair curls darkly around too-big ears, hazel eyes peer at her inquisitively at her._

_“Are you all right?”_

_“I—do I know you?” There is something so familiar about the boy’s face and yet she cannot place it._

_“It’s me Lin.” His face grows deadly serious, “Are you having another episode? Should I call dad?”_

_“What?”_

_“Dad!”_

_In an instant a figure appears at the door of the house. Rey springs to her feet. A hand flies to her belt but there is no saber there. Strong arms take hold of her and Kylo Ren cradles her even as she fights him. Over his shoulder the child looks on with frightened eyes._

_“Shh. Rey its okay, the war is over. We won.” He whisper’s in her ear, a hand cups her cheek as she grows still. “Calm down. You’re scaring Lin.”_

_“Lin?”_

_Those eyes look down at her, creases of concern gathering around the corner. “Our son.”_

_“We have a son?” There is a pain in her chest but she can’t identify the source._

_A smile tugs at Kylo’s mouth. “The campaign on Dantooine? Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten that?”_

_“I-I…”_

_“You should rest Rey. It doesn’t do you any good getting worked up.” She hardly comprehends the words as he guides her through the doorway and into the house. He leads her to another doorway, depositing her gently on the bed that lies inside. The child—Lin—who has been following close behind clambers up onto the sheets.  Kylo tucks a piece of hair behind her ear. Rey’s breathing slows though her heart still seems to pound unnaturally loud. “There now. Sleep a bit. You’ll remember everything when you wake up.”_

_Outside the windows the sun is sinking, washing the jungle in orange light._

_Soft lips brush against her forehead._

_“Thank you Rey.”_

Rey wakes with the words still ringing in her ears, tears coursing down her cheeks and knows she is alone. No weight clings to the far side of her bed. The sheets are pressed smooth except for the patch in which she has tossed and turned. He is not here and has never been.

She presses the palm of her hand against her lips to stifle the sobs that build with each breath. Rey cannot erase the face of the child from her mind. It had all been so beautiful, and so horrible. Guilt, and longing tear at her in equal measure.

Somewhere an alarm sounds. Then another. Then another.

Rey scrambles from her bed, tugging on her boots with clumsy fingers. She thanks the force that she hadn’t changed out of her uniform earlier. The holocron sits on the floor by the bed. After a half second of contemplation she snatches it up, stuffing it into her pocket. She searches through the small closet for her staff before remembering that she’d lost it when they’d crashed on Dromund Kaas. The sith saber sits as always on the highest shelf. _You need a weapon._ She swallows down a wave of disgust and snatches it up. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Outside the hallway has been transformed into mayhem. Resistance fighters run back and forth, many looking as if they too had just rolled out of bed.

Rey’s boots pound against the duracrete as she dashes to the control center. Unlike earlier the room is packed. A hologram of Poe flickers on the display. His is bleeding from a nasty cut on his forehead. His flight suit is badly singed.

 “—knew we were coming. Ambush. Someone must have warned them.”

“Do you need an extraction team?” General Organa’s knuckles are white at the edge of the projection board.

“No time, you’ve got to leave us. We’ll be—“ The connection flickers. “—they’re coming. Got to evacuate. Kylo Ren—“

 “Captain Dameron!” But the connection has died and Poe’s face fades away.

One of the technicians pulls up the scanners on a display. “General I have three star destroyers are coming out of light speed.”

Rey stumbles backwards out of the control center, almost tripping over her own feet. Her heart hammers.

 _Someone must have warned them._ Rey feels suddenly very ill. Sweat beads at her forehead and she braces herself against the wall. _Thank you Rey_. It had been her. She knows it with a horrible creaping certainty. She had reached out to him and he had plucked their plans, their location and who knows what else from her sleeping mind.

“Rey?!” General Organa’s voice rings out from the doorway but Rey doesn’t heed it. She’s already dashing down the hallway, not back to her room, but in the direction of the hangar.

Kylo Ren had stolen their plans from her mind. She can’t stay here. She’s a liability and it wouldn’t be long before he came for her too. After all, wasn’t that his plan, to make her sit beside him like some sort of slave?

The hanger is restricted to pilots and specific personnel but she’d wheedled the codes out of Finn a long time ago. Inside is madhouse. Pilots and repair crews work frenziedly to get the few remaining x-wings and battle capable ships airborne. Rey takes advantage of the confusion to examine her prospects. She can’t take the Falcon, it’s too recognizable. After a moment of indecision she settles for a non-descript looking transport.

“Hey! You’re not supposed to be in here!” A pilot calls out as she dashes past. He advances blaster raised. Rey doesn’t hesitate, the force unfurls in her veins and she sends him flying backwards into the side of his X-wing, stunned.

The loading doors of the cruise snick shut behind her. Rey settles into the pilots chair and the controls whir to life as she begins engine ignition.

“Transport shuttle 297, you are not cleared for departure.” A voice crackles over the intercom.

Rey snatches up the com-piece and lets the force wash over her. “I have been cleared for takeoff. You will open the departure gate.”

For a second she fears it won’t work; it’s been a long time she she’s tried this trick. Then the voice is back. “You have been cleared for takeoff. I will open the departure gate.” With a creaking groaning noise the gates open and Rey shoots forward. The blare of the alarm grows more distant as she hurtles upwards through the atmosphere. She pulls away from the planet just as the Finalizer drops into orbit, flanked by two other star destroyers. Even from such a distance Rey can make out the shape of Kylo Ren’s shuttle, dwarfed as it is by the First Order ships. He is there, she can almost picture him, watching the TIE fighters launch through the dark visor of his helmet.

She knows that it will only be a matter of minutes before they lock onto her with their tractor beams. With shaking hands Rey punches the coordinates into the navi-computer and begins hyperdrive ignition. If this is going to work she needs to get far away from here.

 _KYLO REN!_ Abandoning caution she casts her thoughts out like a blast. Kylo Ren does not respond but she knows she has his attention, that he is listening. The hyperdrive hums to life and the stars blur into trailing lines of phosphorescent light. _Catch me if you can._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry day after christmas (at least where I live) everyone!  
> Well you know what they say...it isn't Star Wars if someone doesn't lose a hand. Kylo sure seems to be accumulating injuries, however, I didn't think it was realistic for him to defeat Snoke without it coming at a cost. Also Rey should be nicer to Leia, but she's very confused and upset right now so we'll let it slide.  
> In any case, I hope the chapter was enjoyable. Any feedback would be amazing :)


	8. No Latibules for the Hunted

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Latibule (n.) a place into which you can disappear, a hiding place

            She runs. Far as she can. Fast as she can.

            It is not enough, Rey knows, it will never be enough. First order contingents chase her from system to system. Though she sees no glimpse of him she knows Kylo Ren is snapping at her heals.

            You can’t run from me forever Rey. You know I’ll find you.

             He may be right, the pull of his gravity is hard to resist even when she is rested and calm. Still Rey’s determined not to make it easy for him.

              She sells the Resistance shuttle right away—it’s too easily identifiable—trading it in for a meager number of credits on Thyferra, and stealing an old spice tanker. It’s not much but it will do.

 _He_ is not the only one looking for her.

              While she wends her way between the clustered stalls and crumbling warehouses of Thyferra’s black market she sees Resistance issued wanted posters. They stand side by side with the First Order ones. General Organa has put a massive price upon Rey’s save return and pricks at her heart they she may have done the General harm in her sudden departure.

              Still it can’t be helped, not when Kylo Ren can steel into her mind as he pleases and steal their plans from among her thought. She is a liability they cannot afford.

 

* * *

 

              The resistance base on D’Qar is in ashes by the time his shuttle lands.

              Caught in the middle of an evacuation when the first order fleet had dropped out of hyperspace, the base had given little retaliation to the First Order blasters. Hux’s fleet had made short work of any stragglers left planet side. Far above the flashes of light tell him that a few straggling resistance shuttles are still engaged with the first order fleet.

              Around him First Order technicians scramble to recover what files they can from the remains of the resistance control center.

             “They detonated their own charges.” Inside the control room of the finalizer Hux fumes, his hologram projected onto one of the surviving resistance holo-pads. Kylo says nothing.

              Smart. He’ll give them that. It’s quicker and easier to destroy the control centers than risk the First Order cracking into their system.

             “They will have wiped all the consoles.” Hux continues, his voice crackling slightly with the satic. Kylo notes the way Hux’s fist tightens.

              It’s an empty victory. The resistance is not here, and any information they could have gleaned has been destroyed. But more than that, she is not here. He can feel it, the warmth of her presence leached from this place, leaving it cold and desolate.

              Kylo felt her before, he thinks, in the moment after his transport had dropped out of hyperspace. He had felt her, burning bright and alive. Now, however, when he reaches out with his mind he finds only cold silence where she ought to be. Wherever Rey is she has hidden herself from him.

_Catch me if you can._

             Frustration snarls like a wounded animal in the pit of his stomach and he brings his fist down on the holopad with enough force to shatter the screen. The projection of Hux wavers in winks out. Around him the First Order technicians pause in their effort. He can feel the fear wafting off them.

_Rey! Where are you!_

             Silence.

_I know you’re there!_

              “Supreme Leader.”

              “What?!”

              The technician visibly quakes but connotes on. “All the technical records have been destroyed but we’ve recovered some security records. Would you like us to run them?”

              He waves a gloved hand that they should proceed, and the technician pulls up a blurry feed.  

              “Show me the hangar camera from before the attack.”        

              He watches on the holopad as a slight hooded figure creeps through the empty hangar. The figure seems to consider the rows of dormant ships before slips aboard a nondescript looking shuttle. Moments later the engines ignite

Security Breach, the words flash across the screen, unauthorized departure from hanger B. Shuttle 297 report to dock immediately. The feed cuts out but he’s seen enough. He doesn’t need to see the hooded figure’s face to know who is aboard that shuttle.

               “Send out an alert for resistance shuttle number 297. I want it found at all costs.”             

 

* * *

 

              They find the shuttle. Three standard cycles after the assault of D’Qar the message comes in: shuttle 297 has been located in a ship yard on Thyferra. She will be long gone by now, he knows, still when the report comes he finds himself plugging the planets coordinates into the navi-computer.

              The heat clings to his robes as he stalks through the lines of rusting abandoned ships. Sweat gathers on his brow and for once he is glad he did not bring his mask.

              “Here supreme leader.”

              His escort halts before a dated looking shuttle emblazoned with the symbol of the resistance. Wise of her, to sell it. The shuttle is hardly anonymous.

              Azarah Ren stands beside the metal hull, shrouded and masked despite the heat. She gives a little nod as Kylo approaches. She’s always been the shortest of the nights her head barely reaching Kylo’s shoulder. Still he knows her to be a formidable foe and strong ally in battle.

              “What have you found?”

              “We’ve gutted the computers.” Azarah’s voice is low and raspy, but unmodified by the mask. “We found one holorecording, otherwise all the computers have been wiped.”

              “Show me.”

              He allows her to lead him aboard the shuttle. It’s barren, no evidence remains that she was ever here. Once in the cockpit Azarah places one gloved hand against the ships archival computer.

              A recording springs to life in a wash of blue light. Rey is wearing a cloak with the hood thrown back. Her hair is pulled away from her face, not in its customary loops but rather simply tied back by a length of chord. Even through the recording he can see the circles under her eyes, the hollowness of her cheeks. The sight of her sets a dull ache in his stomach.

              _“Hello.”_ Her voice is distorted ever so slightly by the recording. _“I know you’re looking for me. Please stop. I am not—can’t be who you want me to be.”_ The recording-Rey does not say who she’s addressing—it could be a message to the resistance for all he knows—but Kylo has a distinct impression that she’s speaking to him. _“So please, don’t come after me. I don’t want to be found.”_

              The holorecording fades away.

 

* * *

 

              Rey’s almost caught on Onderon. She runs between sooty buildings for hours, until she is out of breath and her hair clings to her face and neck.

              _Foolish._ She’d stopped to buy rations. Where she’d once sworn never to eat the bland scavenger-meals again she now finds they are once more at the center of her diet.

             The same wanted posters she’d seen on Thyferra are plastered on every ally wall in Iziz city. She’d kept her hood up, but someone had recognized her none the less. Unlucky for her whoever it had been was no friend of the resistance.

              She crouches behind a bank of power converters and watches the two Knights of Ren pass her by. One lifts a transmitter to its mouth, no doubt reporting back to Kylo Ren that they have lost her. Rey lets out a deep breath. It’s a lucky escape. Weak and exhausted, she doesn’t favor her odds against the two fully armed knights.

             On the way back to her ship she catches a glimpse of herself in glass window. Rey almost doesn’t recognize her own face. Her cheeks are haggard and the circles under her eyes prominent. She does not look like the young woman who had set out so triumphantly to Ach-To not even a year ago. She does not even look like the watchful lonely child from Jakku. Instead her eyes have the hollow deadened look of a wild thing that knows it will never stop being hunted.

              That night she sits on the floor in the bunk room of her stolen tanker and pulls the sith saber out from among her scant belongings. She weighs it in her hands. _I need a weapon_. But the hilt feels strange, not quite right in her hands. Rey ignites it and the twin sabers bathe her in scarlet light.

              _Keep it the color suits you._

              Seized by a sudden inspiration Rey disengages the saber and pulls out a tool kit. She sets to the task of disassembling the weapon. It comes apart easily, after all she’s had a whole lifetime to practice the art of stripping things down.

              Reverently she exposes the weapon’s core, two dark ruby crystals nestled amid the wires and mechanics. She weighs them in her hand. They’re warm, almost hot against her skin, glowing with an inner fire.

              Drawing up her legs into a meditative position Rey closes her eyes and pours herself into the two crystals before her. Memories of people she’s never met flash before her eyes: a child cowering in a corner, and man collapsing on a cold marble floor, sunlight on broad avenues of a great city.

              Rey pulls her mind away from the crystal. Her teeth chatter and she feels slighting feverish. In front of her the crystals glow red as ever.

              Frustration gnaws at her stomach. Rey fights the urge to hurl the crystals across the bunk.  With shaking hands she instead pulls the gutted saber towards her. The design is archaic but it could be retrofitted to house a new crystal, if she could find one.

              Frantically she searches the recesses of her mind for what Luke had told her about Kyber Crystals: something about Illium, and caves. It wasn’t a topic she’d ever paid much attention too. She’d never anticipated losing her own saber. Pulling out a holomap she types in the coordinated of the Illium system. It’s not far, less than two days travel.

              It seems unproductive to go trapesing across the galaxy because a half-remembered story. But, as Rey drags her feet towards the cockpit, she thinks it’s not as if she has anywhere else to go.

             

* * *

 

             

               Back aboard his shuttle Kylo Ren brings his fist down on the smooth surface of the table. Beyond him the projection of Hux flickers. Over the last days he has grown to despise the general’s face even more than he once had. But today his vitriol is not for Hux. Reports had come in that Rey had been spotted on Onderon, but they had come to nothing. Once again, she has slipped through his fingers. _Rey._ She falls through his nets like quicksilver. Like a ghost.

              _“Careful with your temper Ren.”_ Hux sneers. He would not be so smug if he were standing in front of me.

              _“I don’t want to be found.”_ Her words ring in his ears.

              _The resistance has fallen back to the inner rim. We’ve overrun their base at Crait, and they’ve taken heavy losses._ The briefing droid chirps in the background and Kylo is tempted to silence it. His leg is aching again in its brace, never quite healed from his time of Dromund Kaas. It makes him irritable and frays his patience.

“Any news of the girl?”

              _“She is irrelevant.”_

              But she is everything. Hux, the First Order, they can all rot. They mean nothing but a means to an end. _She is the end. And the beginning._

Even through the wavering blue light of the holoprojector Kylo can see Hux’s sneer with perfect clarity. “ _We have a war to win Ren. I encourage you not to let your personal desires get in the way.”_

              So far they have preserved their uneasy alliance but Kylo knows it cannot last.

             

 

* * *

 

            The first thing Rey notices as the Falcon’s door hisses open is the cold. She’d grown accustom to D’Qar’s breezy nights, and to the damp costal chill of Ach-To, but Illium is something completely different. It’s colder even than the ice forest on Starkiller. A wall of white seems to rush at her as she descends the gangplank, icy drafts buffeting her. She shivers inside her thermal suit. I don’t belong here. Rey is a creature of sand and sun and here in this frozen wasteland she feels more out of place than ever.

            The second thing she notices are the voices. Ghosts. The air on Illium is full of them. Whispers swirl among the snow flurries, pooling in her ears and sending chills down her spine that have nothing to do with the cold.

_Lost._

_Gone._

_Forsaken._

           She has come to the right place. Rey shoulders her pack and plugs the coordinates of the caves into the hand held navigator. By midday she has a dull ache forming at the back of her skull.

            Still she presses forward. Illium’s strong force signature should hide her from prying eyes, at least for a while. But she knows he’s still searching for her and sooner or later even the pull of the planet won’t keep her safe forever. Frozen and alone on the bare tundra, it’s the last place she wants him to find her.

             After an hour of walking the snowstorm begins to dissipate, giving way to skies of crystal blue that seem out of place amid all the white. Not far off the foothills of jagged peaks rise into view. Otherwise the landscape is mostly devoid of features.

Here and there rings of jagged rock rise from the show drifts like broken teeth. Once Rey dares to stray amid these ghostly ruins. The moment her feet breach the circle the whispers tugging at her conscious become shouts. She doubles over as a multitude of voices wash over her in a tidal wave of noise.

              “ _You’re doing it wrong Mika!”_

_“Don’t want to—"_

_“Master Karic will be so proud.”_

_“Is anyone listening to me!”_

               They’re not malevolent, not like the voices on Dromund-Kaas. They’re just loud. The sheer number of them pushes her under, threatening to drown her all together. Rey staggers backwards out of the broken ring and instantly the pain in her head diminishes to a dull throb.  After that she gives the stones a wide berth.

               It takes a good part of the day for her to traverse the bleak landscape. She reaches the foothills of the mountains just as Ilum’s sun is beginning to dip towards the horizon. As the shadow of the craggy peaks falls over her Rey’s navigator begins to chirp. She hardly needs it to tell her she’s arrived; she can feel the pull of the force, like an invisible hook in the pit of her stomach. Careful of the ice Rey skirts a rocky shelf, and slides down the side of a steep ravine. There, where two shoulder of the mountains meet a dark slash stands out against the white of the snow. The cave’s mouth gapes like the maw of earth itself.

              With trepidation she lights at torch and steps through the opening.

              At once the voices quiet. The air inside is calm, and the ache in Rey’s head begins to dissipate.

               It’s warmer inside the cave too. Water trickles down the walls and falls with a soft plink plink against the stones. Someone has carved steps into the rough rock surface but they soon give way to a series of sloping passageways. Rey follows no chart. Instead she lets the force pull her forward. Like a great invisible magnet she doubts she could resist it even if she tried.

              All at once the passage opens up and Rey emerges into a series of vast caverns. Stalactites and stalagmites meat each other to form enormous ropy pillars. Pools of water lie amid the rock formations black and still. The whole place is illuminated by an eerie white glow. At first she thinks that it is the stone of the walls that is glowing, but upon closer inspection she notices crystals, some as big as her head, others smaller than a fingertip lie imbedded in the rock formations.

              A crystal, smaller than her fist protrudes from a fist of rock overlooking a pool of water. The moment her gloved fingers brush it she knows with a certainty: _this one is for me_. Deftly she uses wedge to pry it from the rock. It comes free surprisingly easily. Only when she holds it up does she notice that it’s cracked, a hairline fissure dividing it in two even parts.

              Her heart sinks. An image of Kylo’s crackling saber flashes in her mind.  A cracked crystal will make the blade unstable.

              Rey ponders the bisected crystal. She’d always meant to repurpose the sith saber, transform it into a single bladed weapon like Luke’s. And yet…

              She lays the crystal against the rock and brings the butt of the wedge down against it. There’s a snapping noise and the crystal splits, falling away in two equal sized fragments.

              Carefully Rey peels back her glove and lays the fragmented crystal upon her bare palm. She projects as much of her own force signature as she dares through the contact.

              The crystals seem to shudder, the light in them dimming momentarily. Then they flare up, projecting a kaleidoscope of colors.  Rey’s breath catches in her throat as the crystal darkens from a watery blue to a deep scarlet red. But it stays that way only for a moment, bleaching out to a soft yellow glow. She cradles them in her hands and lets the wave of rightness carry her momentarily away.

_These are for me._

              For the first time in weeks the ghost of a smile traces her lips.

 

* * *

 

              Where she evades him in life, Rey comes to him in dreams. Some nights they fight, others lie together as they had on Dromund Kaas. Every once and a while she comes to him as she had in his vision from the Sith Temple: beautiful and terrible in her mastery of the darkness.

              _Tonight, Kylo dreams that they lie side by side on a bed of grass and straw. Rey has her eyes closed, hand folded neatly across her chest as if in some sort of meditation. Dark hair fans around her face like a halo._

_“Rey.” Mine. He brings a hand up to cup her face. Freckles dance across her cheeks like constellations. “You are so beautiful.”_

_A faint smile quirks at her lips. “Oh Ben, you already know how this ends.”_

_There is a crackling and for the first time he notices the flames that have sprung up around the straw bed. Not a bed, a pyre._

_“Rey!” But she does not stir, instead lying silent and cool as a statue. “Rey wake up!”_

_Panic rises like bile in his throat. Seizing a hold of her he tries to drag her away, out of the reach of the fire. It’s as if someone has replaced the blood and sinew of her body with stone. He reaches for the force but it evades him._

_The flames are rising, catching the fabric of her robes. Smoke clogs his lungs. His eyes sting. H can feel when his own clothing catches, flames lapping against his skin like daggers._

_Rey. Desperately he reaches for the force, seizing the tenuous thread that lies always in the back of his mind. Wake up!_

Kylo wakes with gooseflesh spreading across his skin, though his chambers aboard the finalizer are not particularly chill. His heart hammers in his chest. Shivering he pulls the sheets tighter about himself.

              _Kylo?_ Rey’s consciousness brushes against his, soft as a whisper. Despite the lightness of her touch he can sense her concern.

              _Rey? Are you there?_

              _Hmm._ She is asleep still, or else still trapped in the hazing moments just after waking.

              _Stay._

              _What do you want?_ She is fully awake now,

              _I want you._

              She is fully awake now, concern and fear shooting through her in equal measure. He feels as she begins to slam up the barriers around her mind.

 _Wait!_ Frantically he grasps at the tenuous link between them, seeking to hold her in place, to stop her from escaping. _Don’t leave me._

              But she is already slipping away.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who saw The Last Jedi and is feeling the writing bug? That's right! Blow Out the Stars finally got a new installment! I have a lot of ideas for stories based off TLJ, however, I would like to finish this story first. Even though it's been ages since I updated I hope that some of you are still interested in reading it. As always I hope you enjoyed, comments and kudos are always appreciated.


	9. A Naufragous Cause

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Naufragous (adj.) in danger of being wrecked or totally destroyed

 

 

 

            Rey sits on the cold metal floor of the tanker and tinkers with the sith saber. Tools are strewn around her: wrenches, wires, spare bolts. Taking things apart is infinitely times easier than putting them back together. As it turns out light sabers are no exception.

             She fiddles with one of the kyber crystals, debating how best to fit it inside the metal shell.

_Not there._

             She ignores him, tamping down the connection. She tries to fit the crystal between two fuses. It fits but not quite right.

_Try adjusting the red wire._

_I don’t need your help._

_Just try it._

            She does, and in the resulting space the kyber crystal clicks into place. _How did you know how to do that?_

            His amusement is evident as he flashes her an image of his own weapon. _I have some experience._ It gives her pause humor is not something she often associates with him.

            She lets him guide her hands as she fits the remaining pieces of the saber back together. As she adjusts one of the fuses she notes, _You shouldn’t be helping me._

_Why not?_

_Helping me make a weapon I could kill you with?_

_You won’t._

            She pushes a strand of greasy hair out of her eyes _. How do you know that?_

_You said it yourself once. Wanting makes you weak._

_I don’t want you. Not anymore._

            Kylo says nothing but she can tell through their link that he doubts the truth of her words. She doesn’t blame them. She doubts them herself.

            With trembling fingers she slides the metal shell of the hilt shut, letting the now warm metal cylinder rest gently in her palms for a moment. Then she grips it, rising to her feet and pushing down hard on the ignition. Nothing happens.

 _It’s not enough to press the ignition the first time. You need to_ will _it to light._

_How insightful._

            She holds the saber crossways in front of her chest, so that it parallels the floor. She takes a deep breath and pushes herself into the crystals as she had on Ilium. She trails fingertips of the force over the cold metal, into the wires and fuses.

           There is a hiss and twin blades spring forth, one first then the other. They bathe her in their golden light.

 _I was wrong on Dromund Kaas._ Kylo remarks. _This color suits you far better._

 

* * *

 

            Since the death of Snoke the First Order has given no quarter, taken no prisoners.

            Kylo is surprised then to find the Resistance Admiral in one of the Absolution’s holding cell. He watches her through the one-sided glass. Her lavender hair hangs lank around her face, thin frame bent double.

             He’s worn his mask today. He finds it inspires far more fear than the sight of his face. Fear, as a tool, can be useful. Yet he finds no trace of it wafting from the mind of his prisoner.

             “A gift from General Hux.” A captain hovers nearby looking apprehensive. “He thought you might be able to make her talk.” A gift indeed. Since destroying the bases on D’Qar and Crait the trail of information as to the whereabout of the resistance bases has run dry.

              Kylo turns “Tell Hux that I am not his interrogator, nor his to command.”

              “Yes Supreme Leader.”

             “How did you capture her?”

              “Cynda.”

              “I see.” He had not known they’d taken prisoners from that bloodbath. The metal paneled door of the holding cell clicks shut with a wave of his hand. The prisoner does not look at him as he enters.

             “What is your name?”

             She raises her face to him. It is drawn and lined, but recognizable. How often had his mother hosted her in their apartments on Coruscant back when he was still a child? Amylin Holdo.

             “Hello Ben.” There is defiance in her steely eyes. He will not indulge her, not give her the satisfaction of using such familiarity.

              “Tell me Admiral, where was the resistance last based?”

              “I won’t tell you anything.” _Of course you won’t_. Hux couldn’t break her, so he’d sent her to Kylo instead. “I’ll die first.”

              “You won’t have that choice.” He holds his hand out before her. She glares at him. He can feel how her mind fights it, pushes against his intrusion. But she is no force user, and she cannot resist him forever.

               Like pulling shards of glass from a wound he extracts the information from Holdo’s mind _. He sees the resistance: proud and jubilant no longer. It gives him a jolt of satisfaction to see them crouch in caves and old bunkers like the beasts they are. His mother’s face has more lines than he remembers. She lays a hand on the shoulder of a young lieutenant. “There is still hope out there. She will return.”_

_They are trapped in the hangers of an old base on Danyako._

_His mother’s face is grave as she turns to Holdo. “If we can win free, make it to Couruscant then my friends will support us. We can call a council, get other planets to raise their fleets. We’re not alone in hating the First Order.”_

              His throat feels suddenly very dry. Does his mother mean to hide the whole of the resistance amid the glittering skyscrapers? Leia would take the resistance to the last place he’d ever think of, the last place he ever wanted to return to. _Home._ Amid Coruscant’s throngs of people, the thousands of buildings the resistance can disappear. Wait until the time is right. They’ll lay low until Leia’s network of supporters can rendezvous and devise a new plan.

            His foolish mother, she puts too much faith in old friendships.  She thinks she can call up memories from the time of the rebellions and people will come running. She must be truly desperate.

            “Thank you Admiral Holdo. You’ve been most useful.” He releases Holdo’s mind and she slumps to the floor. He can feel the anger in her eyes, the hatred as he turns away

            He stalks from the holding cell, boots clicking on the duracrete floor. Behind him the junior officer scrambles to keep up.

            “What should I tell General Hux? Did the prisoner know anything useful?”

            “Tell Hux to set a course for Danyako, and send out a summons to my knights.”

            “Anything else? Any plans? She’s highly ranked.”

             He ought to tell Hux about General Organa’s plans. If the they cannot catch the resistance before they flee the first order will have no choice but to engage them on Coruscant. For all he knows she may be there already.

             If he tells Hux, the First Order fleet would be there within hours. Hux would destroy the old senate house, the Jedi temple, everything until the resistance leadership was destroyed. Countless civilians would die. Like most things Hux did an assault on Coruscant would be brutal, decisive, and unnecessarily wasteful. _If we strike, wipe out their leadership, we could end it now?_ But another part of him rebels and with another more reasonable voice reminds him: _You want to rule, but_ _what is the point of ruling if there’s nothing left to rule but ashes?_

_Let’s hope they’re still on Danyko._

             “She knew nothing else.” He keeps his voice even behind the modulations of the mask.

              The captain nods. “And the prisoner?”

             “You can schedule her for termination.”

 

* * *

 

             A fuse has blown on the tanker’s temperature regulation system and for once it’s beyond her skill to fix. She simply doesn’t have the parts. Still Rey is reluctant to land and buy a new one. Rey has yet to forget her narrow escape on Onderon.

            She can stand the heat for now. It’s a far less pressing problem than the fact that the tanker is running low on potable water. Rey knows that eventually it will force her planet side. She’s spent the last few days rationing it, delaying the inevitable.

            Rey sweats through the day. At night (or what passes for night in open space) she lies tossing and turning on her narrow cot.

            A storm is brewing, far from her but close enough that she feels the tension—like a thread stretched taut—through the force. She does not know where, nor when but Rey has a feeling that something is about to happen.

             Seized by a sudden recklessness she reaches out to him, guarding her location as she goes.

             At once Kylo Ren is there. Lips crush against hers with a bruising force.

             At first she wonders if she’s dreaming of Dromund Kaas again, but the mattress beneath her is too solid, the feeling of the rough spun blanket too real.

             Rey opens her eyes and finds his own dark ones peering down at her. Kylo’s pupils are blown, almost engulfing his irises. She can see his quarters around her, the large bed covered in black silk, the thick glass windows, as if they are being projected over her own desolate surroundings.

Both here, and at the same time not here.

_“Rey.”_

           “Ben.” She speaks his name out loud, though she knows he is only here in her mind

 _“Kylo.”_ He corrects her.

            One of his fingers traces the scar down her cheek. His fingertips are cooler than she remembers and when she glances down she catches the gleam of metal. “It becomes you.”

            She can’t help but let out a little bark of laughter. “You scar becomes me?”

 _"It’s only fitting. And eye for an eye.”_ His metal hand toy with the hem of her tunic. They are nose to nose and she can see the longing in his features. _“Besides it’s only right that we match.”_ His hand dips beneath her tunic to trace the curve of her breast. “ _Tell me where you are.”_

            “No.” She lets her lips whisper down his neck. Her fingertips tug at his tunic hunger unfurling in the base of her stomach.

_“Why not?”_

             He presses her further against the mattress. The vice-like grip of his metal hand keeps her still while he uses his other to peel off her leggings.

 _“You’d just come after me.”_ The words leave her mouth as a groan as his mouth lingers on her inner thigh.

_“And is that so terrible?”_

              The feeling of his mouth, it makes her weak.  Rey wonders wildly if putting her new saber through his chest might stop this dull ache in her own. Only her weapon is too far to grasp, lying on the floor beneath her bunk. Not that it could hurt him anyways. He’s not really here.

              When Kylo removes his flight suit Rey almost wants to cry out. Lean muscle, pale taught skin, but so many scars. He has more now, far more than he’d had on Dromund Kaas. They stand out angry and red against the whiteness of his skin. As he moves over her the brace on his leg clicks. She grips at his arms, nails digging into skin hard enough to draw blood. Beneath it all he feels so, so _solid. It’s not real_. One hand on his chest she can even feel his heartbeat racing even from galaxies away.

              Kylo had hardly been gentle with her in their time on the jungle planet. He’s not gentle with her now. His hands pin her, teeth biting against the skin of her collar bone.

            _“I command the first order now, and with you by my side..._ ” She feels rather than hears the intensity in him. His breath is hot against her fevered skin. “ _Together we could change everything. Raise a new order. Be happy even.”_

              Rey closes her eyes and for a moment she sees the home from her dream on D’Qar. The jungle. The sunlit porch. Her child. She opens them and blinks away tears. It is a dream of a future that has already passed them by.

 _“Don’t you ever get tired of fighting this? Wish it would be over?”_ She can feel the anguish roiling in him. The loneliness that gnaws at him. She it hardly a stranger to it.

             “So long as we are both alive it will never be over.”

_“Please.”_

             “No Kylo. Not like this.”

              She feels his anger, his disappointment from systems away, his anger. But most of all she feels his despair. The tears that wet his cheeks and fall onto his sheets. She longs to let her consciousness go to him, to wipe them away. She stays her hand.

_“ Not like this.”_

              Kylo lets their link slam shut like a tap door. The feeling of his fingertips disappears, the pressure of his body no longer bears down on her. Rey hurls her pillow across the small room and groans into the hard mattress of her bunk, trying desperately to extinguish the spark, the yearning that he has lit inside her. She feels all at once like the little girl on Jakku again, waiting, waiting, waiting for someone or something that would never come. Like dark water loneliness engulfs her. Whether it’s her’s or his she’s not sure.

 

* * *

 

 

              The outer reaches of Danyako’s atmosphere are a massacre. Kylo had feared they would be too late, that the resistance would be gone. As it turned out his fears were groundless. Dropping suddenly and expectedly into orbit the First Order fleet catches the resistance halfway through their evacuation procedure. The finalizer and its smaller sister ship the Absolution make short work picking off the resistance cruisers.

              Beams of light flash as the resistance X-wings engage the TIE fighters. But there are far too few of them and soon they are forced to fall back in defense of their remaining cruiser.

               In his own fighter Kylo zips and dodges between pieces of debris and resistance fire. General Organa is on the bridge of that final cruiser, he can feel it a surely as he can feel Rey, still sleeping fitfully a galaxy away. If he can reach her then it all ends.

               All around him the resistance is pulling back. The X-wings turn tail, bolting back to their hangers. _They’re going to try and jump to hyperspace, damn them._

               There is a loud detonation and his TIE Silencer jerks forward, slamming Kylo against the control panels. Warning messages blare red in front of his eyes. The right engine is losing power.

              A hit from behind.

              It’s then that he notices the TIE fighters. A squadron has broken off from the main battle and instead circled round.

              Resistance undercover agents. They must be. They will have infiltrated the TIE squadrons and are now trying to buy enough time for the cruisers to escape.

 _“ Hux destroy those fighters.”_ He barks into his transmitter, _“Their firing on our own ships.”_

             There’s silence. No response. He checks to see if his com unit is down, but the display reads it as operational. Then…

              Kylo realizes what is happening a second too late, as the resistance cruiser speeds into nothingness and the finalizer’s turbolazers blaze to life.

_Hux._

              Rage flares like a white hot flame, blurring his vision. He punches down the controls and the silencer spins into a sharp dive, dodging the turbolazer beams. Warning messages blare from his console but he ignores them. Kylo is vaguely aware of two other ships flanking him. Azarah and Jakan have peeled off from the main battle. Flashes of light fly past as they direct their fire on the rouge TIE fighters.

             Azarah Ren’s voice crackles over the com unit. _“We’ve been betrayed. We need to retreat. We can’t—”_   To his left he sees her fighter explode in a conflagration of white hot flames. Her line goes dead.

             He banks to the left, zigzagging to avoid the fire of the First Order fighters. Hux will be on the bridge of Finalizer, he only needs power to last long enough to get him there.

 _“We’re taking heavy losses. We have to retreat.”_ Zarya’s voice comes in panicky over the transmitter.

             There are just too many of them. TIE fighters zip past in a tight formation, raining fire down on him. Like a flood they threaten to overwhelm him, drown him.

_“Pull back, and prepare the Absolution for light speed.”_

             Every muscle, every sinew, every drop of blood in Kylo Ren’s body wants nothing more than to press forward. He wants to fly his fighter straight through the bridge of the Finalizer, wants to see Hux bleed on the floor in front of him, to see him pay for his betrayal. It takes every bit of his control to turn about.

            The Absolution gleams against the stars. It’s taken hits too. Half of the surface cannons are gone, blow out into space like so many pieces of rubble. It hangs motionless for the split second. Then he sees its engines begin to glow in preparation for the jump to hyperspace. He revs the engines, urging his fighter forward as much with the force as with the controls.

            His silencer skids through the hangar doors even as the stars around them trail into effervescent lines. He brings his fists down upon the console, head bowing over the blinking lights. Anger gurgles in him but also something else, something shameful, something weak.

           For the first time in his life Kylo Ren is running away.

 

 

* * *

 

 

             Rey wakes in the sixth standard hour. The world seems to tilt around her ever so slightly. It’s nothing compared to the disturbance she’d felt when Snoke died and yet she’s sure that something somewhere isn’t quite right.

 _Ben?_ There is no response. _Kylo?_ She cannot feel him. He has thrown up high walls about his consciousness in which she can find no ledge, no hand hold.

              Rey frowns. Something has happened and now she is in the dark. She has been in isolation for too long, cut off from any news of the war.

              With quick movements Rey dresses. Her clothes lie in a heap at the end of her bunk, a physical reminder of Kylo’s phantom visit. She pulls on her leggings and a loose tunic, the air temperature still being far too warm for anything for substantial.

              When she looking in the small mirror inside the fresher she sees a line a bruises down the side of her neck and across her collar bone.

              Sighing she goes to check her coordinates. Her last jump had put her in the Barka Sector near the edges of the Bars Barka system. She knows very little about Bars Barka so she runs a search on one of her holopads. She finds that it’s has an extensive trading post, often crowded with merchants and smugglers, the perfect place to slip down unnoticed.

              Returning to the bunk room she stows the rest of her belongings. As she shoves her cloak into a bag the holocron becomes dislodged. It falls with a heavy thunk to the floor. Retrieving it Rey weighs it in her hand. She’d all but forgotten about the thing, carrying it across half the galaxy in her mad flight. Now it glows a with a serene blue light. A sudden resolution grips her. _Time to see what you hold._

              Cupping the holocron in her palms Rey pushes all of will into the glowing cube. The holocron is resistant, like a wall of steal in the flow of the force. Rey pushes harder, opeing herself up to the force as she has not since her days on Ahch-to. _Show me._

              The cube flares. In surprise Rey lets it fall from her hands. It lies on the floor, blue light illuminates the bunk room, throwing the beds into sharp relief. It grows brighter until it is almost blinding to look at.

              Rey blinks.

              In the wash of blue light, a woman’s figure appears, wrought of the same light that spills from the interior of the holocron. Her dark hair is bound tightly behind her head. Her eyes are piercing blue. A saber’s long hilt hangs at her belted waist.

 _“Welcome young Jedi.”_ Her voice is soft yet carries a weight of authority. _“What knowledge do you seek?”_

              “Who are you?”

 _“My name is Bastila Shan. I am one who has known both the dark and the light.”_ Her gaze seems to soften, “ _And who are you? I sense much turmoil inside you_.”

              No-one might have been her answer once. “I am Rey.”

              “ _Welcome to the Noetikon of Secrets. The old masters placed me here so that I might be a guide for those who came after._ ” She holds out one translucent hand. “ _I am here to help you Padawan Rey_.”

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I said regular updates have returned. I've completely plotted the rest of the story and am expecting there to be around 12 chapters (depending on if I decide to tack on an epilogue or not).I probably will have chapter 10 sometime over the weekend (as I'm going to the ballet tomorrow and will be a tad busy for writing)  
> You may have noted I briefly included Admiral Holdo in this chapter. I thought she was a cool character RIP.  
> Additionally I've made a playlist on 8-tracks to go with this story. It's mostly just the music I use to write but if you feel like checking that out it will be [here](https://8tracks.com/bastetmoon/blow-out-the-stars)  
> In other news, I've started plotting out another Reylo story focusing on the events and aftermath of The Last Jedi. Please let me know if this is something anyone would be interested in reading. As always hope you all enjoy the chapter!


	10. In Uncertain Equipose

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Equipose (n.) an even balance; equilibrium

            Kylo flees like an animal that has been whipped. Aboard the Absolution he licks his wounds and imagines a thousand horrible ways to kill Hux.

            As it is he’s in no position to retaliate.

            His knights originally six in number have been reduced to four. Among the slain are Azarah Ren and his lieutenant Jakan. Zarya stalks past him more than once, the anger in her mind burning like a torch. She blames him, for the death of the comrade who was also her sister by blood.

            Once, years ago he had felt most at ease among his knights. Now those that remain are like strangers to him, every interaction dogged by an uneasy tension.

            It will not be long before Hux comes after him. The resistance may occupy him for a time, but Kylo knows that the General detests loose ends. Sooner or later the Finalizer will pick up their location and Hux will begin the process of _cleaning up_. Even in the vastness of the galaxy hiding a ship as large as the Absolution is no easy feat.

            More than once Kylo has considered abandoning the disabled destroyer, climbing into his own shuttle and going after Hux himself. He considers himself a good pilot, however, even he couldn’t go against the entirety of the remaining First Order fleet. The TIE fighters would blast him to dust before he made it anywhere near the Finalizer.

            Instead he paces the bridge of the Absolution, setting the remaining pilots on edge and calculating their odds of survival.

            They aren’t good.

            The Absolution limps along, leaking desperately needed fuel. When he’d given the order to jump to hyperspace in the wake of disastrous battle at Danyako Kylo had not accounted for the extent of the damage sustained to the ship. Whole levels of the Star Destroyer needed to be evacuated and sealed and most of their cannons had been rendered inoperable. Days later the technicians are still trying to repair the hyperdrive. According to the chief engineer it’s not an optimistic cause.

             If the remainder of the First Order fleet finds them like this—adrift with limited power and little defense—their estimated survival time numbers in minutes.

  

* * *

 

 

             It is so much. The vastness of the Noetikon of Secrets is such that Rey knows she could spend the rest of her life studying it and still not unlock all of its knowledge.

            Over the following days Bastila’s hologram instructs her in a series of techniques and exercises aimed to strengthen her connection to the force and unlock her abilities.

             She takes breaks only to slip down to the planets’ surfaces, to gather parts for the tanker, which appears to be slowly falling apart, and find out what she can about the state of the war.

            On Tangenine Rey hears the first whispers. An old spice trader drinking Kyrf leans across the table to his companion. “Nasty business on Danyako. Atmosphere riddled with first order ships.” Rey strains her ears to catch the low voice over the chit chat of the other patrons. “Some sort of mutiny I hear.”

            After that she keeps her eyes and ears open.

           Rumors swirl like a sandstorm—unpredictable and inconsistent—but there are some common threads. From them Rey stitches together a picture of what has transpired while she’s been in hiding.

           The first order has imploded. They engaged the Resistance over Danyako and at some point during the ensuing battle Hux seized control of the fleet.  Now he pursues the remaining Resistance across the galaxy, though where they are now varies by every account.

            Kylo Ren is nowhere to be found.

          “I hear they shot him down over Danyako.” An old woman says to the young man sitting next to her, smacking her lips. “Him and all his knights. Don’t know how they managed it.”

           That at least is a lie. Rey is certain that if Kylo died, she’d know through their bond. He’s alive out there somewhere. But as to where he is, Rey’s guess is as good as anyone’s. He’s kept quiet through their bond lately, thoughts and emotions carefully guarded. She’ll admit she’s not used to being the one shut out. It makes her stomach clench with a type of worry she’s not used to associating with Kylo Ren

 

* * *

 

 

            Its early morning when the Absolution’s scanners pick up the first of the First Order’s scout ships.

            Kylo paces the bridge and watches the ship zoom past the duraglass. “I want all out guns on that ship. Do not let it escape.”

            The Absolution’s two remaining surface cannons successfully blast the light fighter into rubble. Unfortunately, they miss the second ship entirely.

             As warning alarms blare through the Absolution’s corridors Kylo calls his remaining Knights. They gather, some in their heavy armor and others still in their flight suits. 

             “Hux will be here in a matter of hours. The ship will not will not be able to resist a sustained attack.”

             “Are you suggesting we abandon ship.” Aman Ren crosses his arms across a broad chest and scowls. He has forgone the mask today, dressed in only a light flight suit. Blue eyes are a piercing as Kylo remembers from when they were children.

             “If you wish to. I am going to hunt down Hux. You can join me if you wish or you can leave.” With a hiss he releases his mask. He can feel them start as his face comes into view. How long has it been since they all stood face to face? “I release you from your vows.”

             He feels Azarah move before he sees her. Her hand goes to the broadsword at her hip, drawing it

             Kylo does not think, body lunging, years of training driving his instinct. There is a crackle of red light and she collapses, body toppling from where the saber had shorn through her.

            “Anyone else?” When no one else steps forward he extinguishes his saber with a hiss. “Stay or leave I won’t stop you.” With that he turns, footfalls echoing down the hallway of the Absolution. It is time to let old things go.

 

 

* * *

 

 

           After a few days of lurking in dingy cantinas and listening in on the edge of conversations Rey buys a new transmitter. She’s surprised there’s still credits left in her resistance account.

            It takes her a while to remember the Resistance codes. There’s a high probability that they’ve changed since she left, but Rey doesn’t know a better way to try and contact them. Besides it’s not really the Resistance she’s trying to reach. General Organa would have every right to try her as a deserter, though secretly Rey doubts it would come to that.

            With any luck Finn will be listening. If she can get a signal through to him he’ll be able to confirm what’s happening, and more importantly how she can help.

            As it turns out she doesn’t have to wait long. Rey is sitting in a seedy café on Corulag when the transmitter lights up. She takes another sip of bitter caf, glances around to make sure no one is paying too close attention, and lifts the transmitter to her mouth.

            “Hello.”

           “Rey? Rey!” Finn’s voice blares from the other end of the connection and Rey _breathes_. “Is that really you?” His voice is slightly garbled by poor connection but clear enough that she can make out the words. Quickly she turns the volume on the transmitter down. The last thing she needs is some lowlife repeating her conversation.

           “Yes I’m here. But keep your voice down, I’m not alone.”

            “Are you all right?” She can hear his concern even through the poor connection.

           “Yes. I’m fine. Listen Finn, is this communication being watched?”

           “No, I had a friend encrypt it for me. It’s just us.” There’s a pause. “Rey, where are you? We’ve looked everywhere.”

           “I can’t tell you where I am, not yet.” It hurts. There’s nothing she’d like more than to tell him her location. But she knows if she does he’ll come after her. “How are you? Poe? General Organa?”

           “Everyone’s alive. Things aren’t great here, but they could be a lot worse.”

            Rey glances around again. “I heard about Danyako.”

            Finn pauses and when he speaks again she can hear the gloom in his voice. “We lost half our fleet.”

            “Is it true about the First Order?”

            “They started shooting down their own ships as soon as we were out of range.” he confirms, “Hux is on a rampage. They’ve started bombing population centers on resistance friendly planets.”

              Anger shoots through Rey. She has never met General Hux, but what she does know of him from Kylo’s memories does not give her a high opinion of him. It was him after all who ordered the destruction of the Hosnian system. “Targeting civilians is barbaric. Is the resistance planning to retaliate?”

             “General Organa has a plan, but she needs time to gather support. We’re trying to distract—” Static overcomes the connection.

             “Finn?”

             “Sorry BB-8 accidentally disconnected a wire.”

              Rey can’t help but smile a little bit. “Tell BB-8 that’s very rude.”

              “Will do.” She hears him scolding the droid over the line. “Where are you based now? Hoth?”

              “I can’t say.” Finn sounds apologetic, “If the First Order figures out where we are before General Organa can rally support its all over. The First Order doesn’t have nearly as much support from other systems as we’d thought. If we can get their backing in time we’ve got a real chance.” There’s a series of disturbances in the line then Finns voice returns. “Listen I’ve got to go. Poe just got back from reconnaissance.”

             “Wait!”

             “What is it?”

             “You’ll send me a message won’t you, when its time?”

             “Yes.” He hesitates, “but Rey, if wish you would come home? We—Leia, Poe, Me—miss you. We need you here.”

             “I will, I promise.” Rey’s heart aches. “But there’s something I have to do first.”

 

* * *

 

 

             “I need to be stronger.” Rey tells the hologram that night. She’s sitting on the bed in an abandoned apartment on Corulag. There are so many crumbling and abandoned complexes on this planet, it had been an easy matter to find one to hunker down in for the night. Outside the grimy windows the sun is setting, orange and pink vivid against the city skyline.

              Bastila’s eyes are implacable. “All the strength you need is already inside you.”

             “How can that be? How can I be strong when I feel the pull to the darkness even now?” _The pull to him. She’s had no words from Kylo, not even a stray thought, but she knows he’s out there somewhere. Like a magnet she feels his draw even if she can’t see him._

              “You fear that pull. It is your fear you must let go.”

              “But…shouldn’t I resist the darkness?”

              “To resist the darkness is to resist one half of yourself.” Bastilla’s translucent form shimmers. “You think the dark and light are opposites. They are not. Rather they are two parts of the same whole. One cannot survive without the other.”

               “You still do not believe me.” She frowns.

              “What you’re telling me goes against everything Master Luke said.”

               “Let me show you something.” Bastila reaches out, and though she is no more than a projection her fingers feel solid as life against the skin of Rey’s forehead. “Open your mind.”

 Rey gasps as the images begin to flood through her.

_A young Bastila sitting beside a tall man who must have been her father “I don’t want to go.”  Fighting, red sabers against yellow in the darkness. A man’s face, cradled in Bastila’s arms, his breath a broken rattle. Darkness. The same man, blue saber in hand, standing over her. His hands in hers. Abandonment. Loneliness. A child in her arms._

               Her eyes roll up in her head and she loses herself to the tidal wave of memory.

               When Rey comes to her face is pressed against the corrugated metal floor of the apartment. She groans and pushes herself up onto her hands and knees. Her head aches and her mouth tastes metallic.

                The projection of Bastila Shan has disappeared. Instead the holocron glows dim and unassuming upon the table where Rey had left it.

                Rey inhales shakily, then exhales. In. Out. In. Out. The memories swim behind her eyes. Pain. Joy. Life. Death. They are a rhythm, ebbing, flowing, in perfect balance.

 

* * *

 

 

                 Kylo sits alone on the bridge of the Absolution—the crew having long ago fled from his rage—and watches the stars winking in the pitch darkness of space. Beyond the thick duraglass lights flash, fire exchanged between the Finalizer and the Absolution’s remaining cannons. His own shuttle is waiting for him in the hanger but Kylo lingers. There is something beautiful, mesmerizing about the two destroyers closing on each other.

_Is this how it all ends?_

                The Absolution shudders beneath his feet.

                 He pictures Rey’s face as he’d last seen her: bloody, burned, and livid atop the ruins of Kaas City and he finds the answer to his own question. No, not the end. _There is still something I must do._

                 With no small degree of irony, he muses on his current situation. How the mighty had fallen. He is alone now, without his knights, without the First Order, without Rey. His dream to put Rey on a throne beside him lies amid the rubble field above Danyako.

                 Only a few days ago he’d asked Rey to come to him. He’d had everything then: the Knights of Ren, the First Order, victory in sight. Now he has none of those things.

                 Not like this. She’d told him then. Then how?

                 Can I even call myself Kylo Ren anymore?

 _I have nothing to offer you._ He bows his head over the darkened control panels. His face stares back. Pale skin, long nose, big ears that his father used to tease him for. Her scar is a pale line down one cheek. _I am nothing._

 _No you’re not. Not to me._ Her consciousness eases against his, as free and natural as breathing. He clings to it, afraid he will blink and she will be gone.

 _Rey. Is that you?_  Her name is like his prayer, his salvation.

 _I am here._ Her mind is calm, calmer than he remembers it _. Ben…_

              His head snaps up at the sound of his old name. The boy who used to be Ben Solo gazes at the stars, wondering which one she’s currently orbits around. _Will you let me come to you now?_

              She does not respond, at least not with words. But suddenly her mind is clear and unguarded. He can see her as he had on Dromund Kaas. He sees the buildings, the sunset painting them orange and gold. Rey is like an ember burning in the cold expanse of space, a beacon.

 

* * *

 

 

             Kylo Ren comes to her, without guards, without his armor or his mask.

             He finds her through the convoluted direction of her thoughts, following a steady stream of consciousness to the door of the derelict apartment in a slum on Corulag. It’s unlocked as he knew it would be. Rey wants him here, why bother to try and keep him out?

             His uneven footfalls echo hollowly on the corrugated metal floors of the apartment complex, sending out ripples that run down empty hallways to lap up against peeling walls.

              She’s beside the window eyes fixed on something distant, something intangible. Hair down, half hidden in darkness she looks at first like a statue.

              Her head snaps round as the floorboards creek beneath his boots.

              “Ben.”

              “Rey.”

              It’s only as the light hits her face that he sees the tears, the unmistakable redness of her eyes. Rey, the wild proud scavenger, the untrained girl who bested him on Starkiller base, is crying. Yet when he probes her mind he feels no disturbance. She is calm, peaceful even.

              Then why?

              “Ben I finally _understand_.” The way she says the word borders on ecstasy, blissful.

              “What do you understand?”

              “The light, the dark, you, me, everything.” She laughs a little at the expression on his face. “Don’t look at me like that.”

              “Then what should I do.”

              She holds her hand out to him, like a child. “Touch me.” He closes the distance between them in three easy strides. Rey folds into his arms like she belongs there. He scoops her up and her arms lace around his neck, twining in his hair.

In the past they had been rushed, hasty and inelegant. This time he is determined to be anything but. Gently he deposits her on the bed, pushing her back onto the mattress. Faint puffs of dust rise where she sinks. Vaguely he wonders how long it’s been since anyone has been here, and how Rey found it.

              Settling over her Kylo kisses her slowly, as if there isn’t a war going on, as if they have all the time in the world. Rey tastes like sweat, and mechanical oil, and freedom.

 

* * *

 

 

              Rey wakes in the middle of the night to faint beep beep of the transmitter. Kylo’s arm is draped heavily across her waist. His breath rises and falls gently upon the back of her neck. She longs to close her eyes, drift back into the lull that exists between dreaming and waking.

              Carefully Rey shifts, extricating herself from the shelter of his body. She slips to the edge of the bed and in the grey light retrieves the transmitter from the floor where lies tangled amid her other belongings. The light glows with a soft ping ping ping telling her that she’s received a message.

               It’s from Finn, only four words yet it makes her heart hammer. Coruscant. They are coming.

               Arms close around her waist. Kylo has woken, moving more quietly than she could ever have imagined he could. He rests his face beside hers, staring out at the city lights. His breath is hot against her cheek.

              “Are you going to run away again?” Kylo’s voice is gruff, still tinged with sleep.

              “No.” she thinks of her friends, of Finn, and General Organa, and Poe. “Not if you come with me.”

              “Where?”

              “Coruscant.” She allows the many memories of her conversations with Finn to wash over him. “The Resistance, your mother, they need our help.”

              “You should let them go Rey.”

               She turns to him in the dark. His eyes are luminous, reflecting the light of the city beyond.

              “We have to stop Hux, he’ll destroy everything if we don’t.” One of Rey’s hands rises to cup Kylo’s scarred cheek. He is quiet. “I won’t ask you to fight for the resistance, just for me. Will you fight with me Ben?”

               Kylo blinks and she wonders if she catches the gleam of tears in his eyes. They are gone so quickly Rey thinks she must have been mistaken. She can feel his resolution before the words leave his mouth. “Yes. It’s time for all this to end.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always hope the chapter was enjoyed. Two chapters left after this, so we're starting to wrap things up. I've been going back through my original outlines as I write the final chapters and it's amazing how much this story has evolved and changed since I began in. Feedback is always greatly appreciated.  
> Additionally, as this story comes to a conclusion I will be rolling out my next Reylo story (which is currently sitting in my drafts file) so expect that in the coming week.


	11. Finifugal at the Last

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Finifugal (adj.) hating endings; of someone who tries to avoid or prolong the final moments of a story, relationship, or other journey

          They dress in the grey light of morning, slipping into their clothes as the sky lightens over Corulag’s derelict apartment complexes.

          Rey watches Kylo as he dresses, the way his hands—real and mechanical—move deftly to pull on his boots, the smatter of marks across his skin like constellations. The brace on his leg creaks and it’s panels flash as he rises. A flash of regret tugs at her. _We were different back then._ It seems as if ages have passed since those days and nights Dromund Kaas.

           Watching him here in the setting of the abandoned apartment it feels strangely domestic. _We could stay here. Forget it all. Live out the rest of our lives._ It is a fleeting thought, quickly washed away on the tide of her consciousness.

           She goes to retrieve her saber from the floor. It lies side by side with Kylo’s. Rey clips hers to her belt and holds it out.

           “Here. You’ll need this.”

            Kylo takes it from her, the brush of his fingers light against her skin and hangs it at his hip. “Thank you.” Then he pulls on his gloves. It’s time.

            They take Kylo’s shuttle. It’s faster. If Finn’s hasty transmission was any indication they don’t have time to waste. Besides after so long on the run Rey’s stolen tanker is fit for little more than parts.

            As they rise upwards Rey keeps her gaze fixed forward. She does not look back at the grey high-rises of Corulag, letting them melt away into the past. Next to her Kylo shifts.

            “Ready?”

            Rey nods and the stars blur around them as the shuttle hurtles into lightspeed. As the stars blur around them Rey twines her finger’s with his. The leather of his gloves is cool but the hands beneath are solid, stable. The feeling gives her strength.

            The shuttle drops into Coruscant’s orbit so suddenly that they almost collide with a passing Resistance fighter. Rey jerks forward, narrowly avoiding smacking her head into the controls.

            Below them the city planet of Coruscant gleams, metallic buildings catching the light.  Like a child Rey presses her nose against the duraglass. “It’s so large.”

            Next to her Kylo keeps his hands firmly on the controls. He does not look down at the planet below. “The whole planet is one big city.” Rey can feel the emotions that swirl inside him, pain, regret, nostalgia. Ben Solo has come home.

            Flanked by several smaller gunships the Finalizer hangs above the city planet, in the outer reaches of the atmosphere. Resistance X-wings and First Order Tie fighter’s zoom around the ship like so many flies but the Finalizer offers little in way of retaliation, instead relying on the gunners for defense. It’s cannons remain fixed on the city below.

            “They’re targeting the city. We have to help them.”

             An X-wing descends over them, hovering above the first order shuttle. The shuttle’s intercom dings to life. Kylo presses down the button to receive the message and a familiar voice fills the cockpit. _“This is Poe Dameron. Identify yourself.”_

_“This is Ky—”_ Kylo starts to respond.

            Rey snatches the transmitter away from him. _“This is Rey.”_

_“Rey? Rey! Finn said you were coming I didn’t believe him!”_

_“I’ve come to help.”_

_“What are you doing in a first order shuttle? And who’s with you?”_

_“It’s a long story.”_ Rey glances sideways at Kylo. She’s not certain if she announces his presence he Resistance won’t try to blow them out of orbit. _“I’ll fill you in later.”_

_“I’ll hold you to that.”_

_“How can we help.”_

_“We’re trying to eliminate their surface cannons,”_ Poe’s voice crackles as a minar explosion rocks both the shuttle and the X-wing, _“but we’re having a hard time getting in at close range. So for now hit’em with everything you’ve got.”_

_“Sounds like a plan.”_ Rey clicks off the transmitter and a moment later they see the fighter zoom past them, scattering a swarm of TIE fighters.

           Next to her in the pilot’s seat Kylo’s eyes narrow as he watches the x-wings zip around the larger ship. His eyes track their movements with dizzying accuracy. Rey wonders which one—if any—is being piloted by Finn. “They’ll never get close enough to take out those cannons. But unless the ship can be disabled in some way they don’t stand much of a chance.” Kylo’s assessment isn’t optimistic but as Rey watches the streaks of light from the opposing faction’s cannons she realizes it’s accurate.

_Disable the ship._ Rey frowns, recalling another destroyer, one she had spent half her childhood picking apart. “What sort of reactor does the finalizer have?” The beginnings of the plan start taking shape in her mind.

           “A III-a1a primary hypermatter-annihilation.”    

            Rey ponders it. It’s a foolish plan, rash, dangerous. The kind of thing Poe Dameron would think of. “I know my way around the Imperial class star destroyers…”

            “The Resurgents are almost identical,” Kylo confirms, “they updated the technology but the basic layout is the same. But I don’t see why that matters.”

              She ignores the comment and jabs a thumb towards the cargo bay. “Do you have any explosives back there?”

              He stares at her, understanding blooming behind those dark eyes. “You want to blow up the reactor?”

              “If we blow the reactor we can disable the ship.”

              “Maybe. But Rey, if the explosion isn’t controlled the whole ship will go up too.”

              “It’s a risk.” She acknowledges, “But it’s the best idea I have right now. So please tell me you have something explosive back there.”

               He frowns clearly searching his memory. “I think I have some old Thorium charges.”

              Rey gapes at him. “You’re just flying around with Thorium charges in your shuttle? Do you have any idea how many credits those are worth?” _It’s a wonder someone hasn’t blown him out of the sky yet._

              Kylo shrugs. “The First Order had wealthy investors. Will they work?”

              Rey grins. “Oh they’ll work just fine. Can you get us on board?”

             “I know the Finalizer like the back of my hand.” The shuttle spins to avoid an oncoming TIE fighter. Rey grips the Kylo’s shoulder to avoid being jostles about. “I’ll get us on.”

              She clicks the transmitter on again.

_“Poe we’re going to try and blow the Finalizer’s reactor.”_

_“You’ll never get close enough.”_ Come the response. Over the link she can hear BB-8 whirring. _“They’re picking us off like flies out here.”_

_“They think our shuttle is one of theirs. If you can keep distracting them, that’ll give us the cover we need.”_

               Poe’s voice crackles across the com. _“May the force be with you.”_

               “And with you.”

                Next to her Kylo punches down on the acceleration. “Hold on. I have a bad feeling about this.” The shuttle hurtles towards the Finalizer.

 

* * *

 

 

 

                After years of stalking its convoluted corridors Kylo knows the Finalizer like the back of his hand. They land the shuttle in Hangar C. It’s the least utilized of the destroyers four hangars and he calculates the safest point of entrance if they wish to avoid notice.

                Careful and quiet at shadows they slip from the ship. Every so often the sound of an explosion rocks the ship as the resistance gunners find their targets.

                Rey shoulders her pack of explosives. “How will we get past the stormtroopers?”

                He presses one gloved figure to his lips as a battalion of troopers thunders past. Once they have rounded the corner out of sight he takes her arm. “This way.”

                Their feet echo on the metal floors as Kylo leads her deeper into the Finalizer’s bowels. They pass the interrogation level and he is reminded sharply of the las time they were both on this ship. She had been so lonely then, and he had been afraid.

                It seems a lifetime ago.

                Kylo charts their route in order to minimize potential encounters with the First Order crew.

                Once they come upon a technician desperately trying to program a sequence into a panel. The woman starts as they round the corner, hand flying to her com piece. Kylo’s fingers go to his saber but before he can so much as ignite it Rey brings her own hand down in a sweeping motion. The technician crumples to the ground. Through the swirl of the force Kylo can sense that she is still alive, only sleeping heavily.

               “Where did you learn to do that?”

                Rey smiles. “I had good teachers.”

                It doesn’t take them long to reach the reactor. The doorway is coded by Kylo doesn’t even bother trying to bypass it. Instead he draws his saber and sinks it up to the hilt in the metal of the door.

                Somewhere an alarm blares. “If they didn’t know we’re here already, they do now.”

                Rey squeezes between the two pieces of hot metal leaving Kylo to duck in after her. In the heart of the finalizer the reactor glows with an eerie light. Every so often and arc of electricity zaps across the empty space to find it’s appropriate conductor.

                Rey stops short staring up at the mechanism. “I spent my whole childhood picking these apart but I’ve never seen a functional one before.” The light given off from the reactor paints her face in a ghostly light.

               Her awe is short lived as the floor rocks slightly. She unslings her bag of charges and turns to Kylo. “Let’s get this over with.”

               He helps, using the force to levitate the charges onto the conductor ports as well as onto the reactor. It’s hot down here and the effort leaves him sweating. When he glances at Rey he sees that her hair hangs limply around her face.

                Rey clicks the first switch on her hastily fashioned controller. Little numbers tick down on its display. “They’re armed. I’ve set them to go off after ten minutes. That should give us just enough time to get back to the shuttle.” As they exist the door hisses shut behind them, hiding the reactor, and the bombs from view. Rey makes to head back the way they had come. Kylo does not move.

               “I’m not going.” His voice rings down the empty corridor.

               “What?” Rey turns to face him, her face is half hidden in shadow but he can see the concern etched on it. And something else, fear. “Why not?”

               “I’m going after Hux.”

                She stares at him, “Are you insane?”

                Kylo shakes his head. “He tried to have me killed.” He gestures wildly at the interior of the ship. “Besides until he’s dead all this will never really be over.”

                Rey brandishes the remote at him. The ticking number flash in the half light. “You do realize that the moment those bombs detonate this whole ship is going to light up like a supernova? Going after him is suicide.”

               “I need to do this.”

               “Fine.” She tucks the controller back into the waistband of her belt and unclips her saber. Her feet are soft as she turns away from the path of escape. “I’m coming with you.”

               “You don’t have to do that. Go back to the shuttle. Get off this ship before it’s too late.”

                Rey lays one hand on Kylo’s arm, her fingers are warm even through the fabric of his flight suit. “No. I asked you to fight by my side, and I will fight by yours.”

 

* * *

 

 

                 Kylo knows the way to the bridge well. That’s where Hux will without a doubt be. They don’t pass any viewpoints on their way but from the way the Finalizer rocks Kylo guesses that the Resistance fighters are finding their targets with at least some degree of accuracy.

                 The few crew members they pass are preoccupied and it takes the only the smallest nudge from the force to encourage them to ignore Kylo and Rey.

                  Near the med bay the Finalizer shakes particularly violently, sending both Rey and Kylo staggering into the wall. Alarms begin to blare.

                 “Are you sure we shouldn’t go back?!” Rey shouts over the alarms.

                 “It’s too late for that!” _He’s come too far._ Kylo can see the numbers on the controller at her waist ticking down. They have five minutes and thirty-four seconds.

                  Rey nods and presses forward.

                  Hux is already bloody and disheveled when they find him. His usually neat hair is unkept and there’s a nasty scratch across his forehead. Staggering through the passages near the bridge, his face contorts into a sneer when he sees the pair of them.

                 “Didn’t think I’d see you again Ren.”

                 “Unlucky for you.”

                  A blaster hangs at Hux’s belt but he is not nearly quick enough to reach it.

                   It would be so easy to draw his saber, or at the very least use the force to strike Hux down. Instead Kylo closes the distance between them and wraps one gloved fist around Hux’s throat. Like a rag doll Hux is lifted and slammed against the wall.

                  “You though you could kill me.” Kylo’s voice sounds strangely calm to his own ears.

                  Hux’s voice is a hoarse whisper. “I wish I had. You—"

                  Kylo tightens his fingers and whatever Hux meant to say is truncated. The mechanical didgets have a grip like the metal they are made from.  In Kylo’s fist Hux gasps for air his face turning red then purple. His hands scrabble wildly for the blaster belted at his side.

                  His hands scrabble at the blaster belted to his hips.

                  “You thought you could make yourself Supreme Leader!”

                   There is a load bang, the sound of a gunshot ricocheting off the Finalizer’s metal walls. Kylo feel the tug of the force as Rey pulls on it. Hux’s blaster flies from his hand as he is knocked backwards. It clatters, twisted and useless against the floor. Pain sears momentarily through Kylo’s bad leg but he ignores it.

                  “You’re pathetic.” Kylo releases Hux and he sags against the wall, breath coming in a broken rattle. “On behalf of the First Order and on behalf of the Republic I sentence you to die.” He raises his saber in an arch of red fire and Hux topples to the floor in two clean pieces. He stares down at the man who he once stood side by side with.

                  “Kylo.” The name is softly spoken, hardly a whisper. He almost misses it over the blare of the alarms.

                   Kylo holds up a hand as if that will stave off Rey’s disapproval. “I know what you’re going to say. I should have left him for a trial.”

                 “Ben.”

                   It’s then that he looks back at Rey. She’s standing in exactly the same place as she had been, but her eyes have gone wide. As he watches she presses her hands against her left thigh. They come away red.

                  Sound roars in Kylo’s ears. He remembers the pain he had felt in his leg. Fire seers through his blood. _No._

                  There is a deafening boom and the Finalizer shudders. The lights illuminating the corridor dim. _The charges,_ Kylo thinks, even as Rey topples to the floor.

  

 

* * *

 

 

 

                The world comes in to focus slowly. The first thing Rey notices is her own heartbeat, it thuds weak but steady in her ears.

                The second thing she notices is Kylo Ren. His face swims into view above her. Rey blinks. He’s shouting something, hands shaking her. She blinks again. After a moment she realizes it’s her name he’s calling.

                “Rey!”

                “Ben?”

                 Her presses her face to his chest, burring her in his arms. “Thank the force.” As he pulls away she sees the wetness of tears on his cheeks.

                 There is an ache in her leg. The pain of it makes her dizzy, dragging her back towards the darkness of unconsciousness. “It hurts.”

                “Rey we need to move. The charges detonated, we have to get off the ship before the whole thing blows.” There is urgency in his voice and Rey realizes that the lights on the Finalizer have all winked out. The air smells acrid, like smoke. Dazedly she let him pull her to her feet. “Can you walk?”

                “I can try.” Rey tests her weight and pain flairs white hot through her left leg. She fights a wave of nausea. “Not far.”

               “I’ll help you.” He laces his arm around her, partially supporting her weight. Together they stagger down the hallway, back in the direction they had come from.

                “Where are we going?” They had landed the shuttle in a hangar on the ninth level but that will have gone up in flames the moment the reactor blew.

                Kylo shouts to be heard over the groaning of metal and blaring of alarms. “There are escape pods on level seventeen!”

                There is fire all around but Rey finds that she’s freezing. Her teeth chatter and her head spins. One foot in front of the other. _Do not black out_ _again_. She doesn’t look down at the wound on her leg. If she can’t see it she can pretend that it isn’t that bad. _You’ve had worse scratches._ She tells herself firmly.

                 Still Rey can feel the wetness of blood seeping through her leggings. When her hand grazes the place where Hux’s bullet marked her, her fingers come away sticky.

                 Together they stagger back the way they had come, Kylo half carrying Rey. He keeps his saber aloft, like a torch in the darkness. The Finalizer shakes violently and Rey can picture the series of explosions now ripping their way through the lower levels. Cracks and fissures have begun to open in the floor. _It’s too far._ She realizes.

                They make it to the bridge. Light momentarily blinds Rey as they step through the doorway. It’s a mess. Displays have been overturned, shards of broken glass and other debris litter the floor. The officers and technicians have long abandoned it—no doubt fleeing to escape pods—and Rey and Kylo stand alone in the bright wash of light from the windows. Beyond the Finalizer’s viewports the endless city of Coruscant rushes up at them, all glittering glass and gleaming metal.

              They are falling. Far too fast.

              “We’re not going to make it, are we?” It’s a rhetorical question. She already knows the answer.

               Kylo looks at her. His dark hair is a tangle and there is soot on his face. He shakes his head.

              “I’m sorry.” Rey can feel the prick of tears in her eyes. “I’m so sorry.”

              “It’s my fault. You don’t apologize.” Kylo holds out one hand to her. “Stay with me.” His eyes burn, bright as they had the first time she’s ever seen his face.

              Her fingers twine with his and Rey lets Kylo Ren draw her in. He holds her against his chest and she inhales the scent of him: smoke and blood. “Don’t let go.”

            “I won’t” He presses his lips to her forehead. “I promise Rey.”

            “Ben.”

            The floor falls out from beneath them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Merry Christmas everyone! I apologies for leaving this chapter with that cliffhanger, but do keep in mind that there is one more installment to go.  
> I also encourage you all to go check out the first chapter of my new reylo story Picture Me With His Crown, which is an alternate take on the ending of TLJ. That story will be gearing up as this one wraps up.  
> Happy Holidays!


	12. Afterwords: A Requiem of the Ashes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Requiem (n.) an act or token of remembrance

            The bodies are burned at sunset. Light from the last glow of Coruscant’s sun paint the glass of the surrounding buildings a bloody red.

            On the steps of the old senate house a great pyre has been constructed. A crowd gathers in the courtyard below to witness the passing of an era. They wait in line to press tokens into the fodder, whispering prayers and wishes to carry the dead into their life. Like saints, in death, they revered beyond the usual respect accounted to the living.

            The bodies themselves have been hidden by heavy funeral shrouds. Hers is white and gold, while next to her they have placed him in black and silver. The sun and the moon, the light and the dark, Rey and Kylo Ren. As if there was really so much difference between the two of them in the first place.

             Half the inhabitants gathered had seen them fall, like two comets, intertwined, surrounded by debris from the ruined ship. Slowed by the power force it had been almost graceful. The other half have heard the story by now. It is repeated in every nightclub, on every factory floor.

             Now the people of Coruscant’s watch the flames rise around their shrouds. Some weep openly, others only stare in wonder. People will speak of this moment for a hundred years. The last of the Jedi and Sith are going up in smoke.

             The mourners do not notice the two figures in grey who slip among them. Their faces are hidden in the shadows of their hoods. The taller of the two laces his arm around the shorter and she leads her head against his shoulder. To a casual observer they might appear like any pair of friends, or lovers. They do not notice how the woman favors her right leg, nor how—upon closer inspection—one of the man’s hands gleams with metal joints.

             It is a strange thing, Rey thinks, to watch her own body burn. Next to her Ben Solo shifts his weight from his bad leg and glances down at her.

             “Is this the ending you wanted?” He asks her, voice low as a whisper so as not be overheard by the family of Mirialans standing nearby.

             Rey glances away from the pyre, hazel eyes finding his dark ones. “It feels fitting somehow.”

             “You know they’ll tell our story for generations.”

             “Yes, I imagine they will.” The Jedi and the Knight of Ren, they two have passed from the reality of life into the realm of legend.

             Her eyes seek out her friends in the crowd. Finn is crying and Poe has wrapped his arms around him. Tomorrow he will wake to find a holorecording in which Rey explains everything and why she and Kylo must be dead. But for tonight the grief will be real. They need to make everyone believe that it has truly ended.

             Only General Organa—Leia—knows the truth of it. After all, it had been her idea. Beneath the shrouds lie the bodies of resistance fighters, killed during the final assault. They receive a heroes funeral.

             As the smoke curls toward the darkening sky Ben takes her hand and together they slip away, anonymous to the mourners.

 

* * *

 

 

            After the fall they had spent a full night in a private medical bay, shielded from the eyes of citizens and resistance alike. Kylo had sat beside Rey as they removed Hux’s bullet from her thigh, his hand never leaving hers.

           Later they’d lain together listening to the steady beeping of the medical equipment. Neither had said a word, but Rey found they no longer needed to, thoughts filling the places where spoken words were not enough.

_It’s over._

_Yes it is._

_What comes not?_

           Rey could, perhaps, assimilate herself with the resistance. She could help them build up the pieces of the republic, bring order back to the galaxy. His options are far more limited. If Ben Solo were to turn himself in to the resistance he would undoubtedly face a trial for his crimes and the role he took in the destruction of the Hossain system. The courts would find him guilty.

           However, as she lay in the med bay listening to the droids wiring around them Rey realized that the idea of rejoining the world of politics and of heroics no longer appeals to her.

_Our time has ended._ His thoughts on the matter were resolute.

           Rey finds she agreed with the man who was no longer Kylo Ren. The time for heroes and monsters—for her and Ben—is over.

 

* * *

 

 

            In the morning he had gone to Leia’s private offices, shutting the door quietly behind him. Rey had waited outside, careful not to reach out to him with her mind. In this she’d given him privacy, both physical and otherwise.

           When he’d finally emerged, over an hour later, there had been tears on his cheeks. General Organa stood beside him, diminutive when placed beside his bulk. When she’d seen Rey she’d embraced her.

           “Thank you.” She had not needed to expound about the reason for her thanks. Rey knew. _Thank you for bring him back to me._ Then she had let Rey go and turned back to her son, resting a hand upon his shoulder.

          “Well it appears I have a funeral to arrange.”

 

* * *

 

 

          The pyre is a wisp of smoke behind them as they climb into a speeder, lent by Leia.

          “Where will we go?” Rey asks as Kylo helps her climb into the passenger seat. The falcon is docked in a nondescript warehouse some blocks away. His mother had given him the coordinates as a parting gift.

           Ben shrugs. “Wherever you like.”

           Rey’s eyes shine in the artificial light Coruscant’s many billboards and signs. “Somewhere green, somewhere alive.”

          “How about Naboo? It’s where my grandmother grew up.” He had always wanted to see the house by the lake where his grandparents had fallen in love so many years ago.

          “That sounds perfect.” Ben agrees. They glide off between Courscant’s towering buildings of glass and steel. As the sky darkens the city lights spring to life, a galaxy of all on their own. They zoom past cantinas and dancehalls, apartments and offices. On the speeder dash the coordinates his mother had given him blink but he ignores them for the time being.

          “And now?” Rey asks, “Where are we going now?”

          “There is something I’d like to show you, before we go.”

  

 

* * *

 

 

          The old Jedi temple looms against the cityscape like a hulking shadow. Ben helps Rey onto it’ landing platform. Together they make their ungainly way up the steps, Rey still limping from the wound on her leg and Kylo’s footfalls made uneven by the brace.

           It is clear that the old temple has fallen into disrepair. The once imposing structure now sports the marks of neglect: wide cracks in the duracrete of the floor and graffiti on the walls.

           Rey and Ben walk among the ruins.

           In the center of the temple is a broken dome. Where there was once glass now only the supports remain, framing the night sky between its metal beams. It is dark and empty, all the stars driven back by the city lights.

           He stares up at the ruined dome and the black sky beyond. “This place, technically it’s our inheritance.”

          “It’s empty.” Rey tells him, taking his hand—the real one—in her own. “Just ashes.”

          “We are the last.” There is a weight in those words. The last of the Jedi. The last of the Sith. The last of an era of grandeur and splendor. At the end of everything only they two remain.

           Rey looks at him and smiles. “Not the last. At least not forever. There will be more.” She says it with such conviction that he thinks there might just be truth to her words.

           Perhaps a time will come for the force to return, for training, and for teaching. Children will grow up to cast shadows far greater than those of their parents. In time Rey and Ben will pass on what they have learned to the next generation, both the light and the dark.

           But that day hasn’t reached them yet. For now they stand, surrounded by the ashes of a shared birthright. One of his hands wraps tight around her shoulders. Hers clutch at the grey fabric of his garments. Heads rest together, hair twining in the breeze. Ben smiles and brushes his lips against Rey’s forehead.

           After all this time, at the end of all things, they remain. Two children, together clinging.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well that's a wrap everyone! I want to thank you all for your wonderful feedback and for sticking with this story through its entirety. I've thoroughly enjoyed writing it.  
> I'm aware that this final installment is a bit shorter than the average chapter, however, it was always intended as more of an epilogue than a full length chapter.  
> As for future work I encourage you all to check out my new Reylo story Picture Me With His Crown. I can also be found on Tumblr [here](http://empressreyy.tumblr.com/)  
> Thank you all! I hope you've enjoyed this story.


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